


The Stories We Share

by freckleslikeconstellations



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Angst, Danger, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Memories, Miscarriage, Multi, Sexual Content, damage control, series 4 references, set post series 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-06 03:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freckleslikeconstellations/pseuds/freckleslikeconstellations
Summary: We tell ourselves stories all the time, stories that help us to cope with reality. When you're diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease stories become more important for you and everyone around you than ever before.





	1. Hotel

**Author's Note:**

> Hi,  
> This story might be a little difficult for some of you to read, so take your time with it. I'd be interested as ever to know what you think as we progress. 
> 
> Thanks for all your support. :)

You’re staying in a hotel. Fresh and airy with only a road and pavement keeping it back from some rusted railings, the beach and sea, it seems to be a popular place. It’s a bit of a shame that the only people around your age-thirty-five-are staff members and everyone else is older, but you can’t have everything you think. Other than that you have no complaints at all. The sun’s been a frequent presence during your time here, your room is fit for purpose and is just a short hallway away from the cosy restaurant with its tables, dining chairs and more comfortable armchairs. The hotel’s even got a hot tub. No, you can’t complain you think with a smile upon your face as you look away from the window. It’s another bright day today and you’ve just been watching a mother trying to chivvy along her red-coated seven-year-old, whilst at the same time she pushes a baby in a pram along the pavement. Your gaze goes back to the dining table. You’re trying to compose a postcard to Molly Hooper-one of your friends. 

 

 _Molly,_ [you’ve put so far]  
_The hotel that I'm staying in is nice. All the other guests seem older than me, but the hotel staff are around my age and everyone’s very friendly.  
I must tell you about one of the waiters in the restaurant though. I think he likes me. He brings me a cup of tea and sits with me all the time. Goodness knows what Mycroft would make of it. It’s a good job that he’s too busy with work to notice. Anyway, I'm running out of space here and I expect that we’ll be home soon. _

 

You’re just about to give her your further regards when you pick up on a commotion that’s happening near by. You look up. The table you’re sitting at is almost in a little alcove, the wall in front of it jutting out. A painting of the beach outside and a flat piece of wood shaped like a tea cup with different types of tea and coffee listed on it in swirling writing hang perpendicular to each other in decoration. A radiator lies just beneath the painting. It rather gets in the way of the chair if you pull it out. You always forget, but eventually end up sitting on the side that you are on now. A woman a little older than yourself with a thick mop of graying brown hair that doesn’t quite touch her shoulders and who you’ve come to know works at reception is just to the side of that jutting out wall, and, with one hand almost on his back is guiding your husband Mycroft towards you. You jump up at once. 

 

“Mycroft where have you been? This man’s extraordinary,” you direct that latter statement towards the receptionist, “He’s got the most amazing mind, but he can’t even find me in a hotel by himself.” 

 

The receptionist mouths, _‘Oh,’_ looking amused.

 

“Hello my dear,” Mycroft says, looking at you rather owlishly out of his blue eyes with his chin tilted down. As usual he’s dressed as smartly as ever with a long black coat on over a black suit, white shirt and blue tie. A silver tie-pin keeps both parts of the tie together. Typical for him to be dressed as if he’s ready for winter when it’s a nice summer day like this you think. Your stomach churns with that fond feeling you have for him. 

 

“Why are you wearing a coat on a day like this?” you ask. 

 

Mycroft’s face looks a little strained at that. “Despite the good quality of sunshine today I can inform you that it’s still a bit cold out. It is winter after all.” 

 

You let out a snort at that. You know it’s summer. You feel sure that it is. “Well, whatever,” you brush his point off. “I can find my way around here just fine.” You step towards him and straighten his tie, though you think that you get it even more out of place and you move it again as soon as you realize, but then it goes too much the other way. 

 

“She can you know? You’re always walking about aren't you F/N?” the receptionist coos. 

 

Mycroft gives you both a rather forced smile. 

 

But you don’t like the way the receptionist had just spoken, _or_ what she’d said. It had been too knowing, like she’s been following you about or keeping a particular eye on you. You might have shared the odd word with her-you’ve been staying in the hotel for a while now after all-but you don’t like the fact that she’s acting like that makes you best friends. You _have_ friends and you suddenly wish that Mycroft could finish this stupid work trip so that you could go back to them. 

 

Your husband must see something change on your face, for he says, “I’ll get us some tea,” and gives your arms a squeeze. 

 

“I'm fed up of tea!” You pull back from him crossly. “I just want to go home.” 

 

“Oh F/N dear you mustn't be mad with him,” the receptionist says, trying to come in between you. You shoot her a death glare. 

 

 _“Please,”_ Mycroft moves her out of the way with one hand. That’s one positive thing about your husband-he’s good at getting rid of people. Especially the ones that you don’t like. “It will be simpler if you just leave us.” The receptionist glances between you, gives a quick nod and hurries off. Mycroft turns his attention back to you. “Sit.” He nods to the chair you’d just vacated. You follow his command with a rebellious air about you. “I’ll get some tea,” he mumbles. You stare at him mutinously. “It will help,” he tells you, much more firmly now. 

 

You nod and feel some tension leave you as he goes off behind you. There’s a hatch there where the kitchen staff can bring out tea and the like for the guests. But Mycroft being Mycroft and the control freak that he is insists on both making and delivering it himself. It’s only a blessing to you that he doesn’t do the same with dinner. You let out a little snort at that and go back to your postcard. But you can’t remember where you were with it now so you have to re-read it. You’re just at the bit where you’re telling Molly about the waiter when you get distracted again. A few of the guests are sitting in the row of armchairs that are beyond the jutting out wall and some of them are being rather loud indeed. Who knew that pensioners could have such spirit? They’re so loud that you can’t even hear the radio station that’s supposedly playing on the TV at the bottom of the room. Just to add to all of that even more there’s a sudden shifting of the wooden chair next to you as someone’s leg catches against it and you let out a breath of irritation. You look up, expecting to see Mycroft there, but it’s that waiter again. You let out a frustrated sigh. “I was expecting it to be my husband,” you tell him, “But I suppose that he just said that he was going to fetch tea as an excuse so he could go off to work again rather than talk to me about when we might be going home.” 

 

The light dims somewhat in the man’s pale blue eyes. He’s got auburn hair like your husband. “I made tea,” he says, putting down one of the cups in the space before him and pushing the other in front of you. You notice how he adjusts it so that the cup would be directly central to each of the chairs if you were to draw a straight line from their middle. The handle faces you. Your husband tries to have that level of precision too. You feel a pang of pain. 

 

To try and get your mind off it you turn towards the waiter some more and say, “You’re nice. I hope they’re paying you well?” The waiter seems to take that as an invitation to slip off his black coat, put it on the back of the chair and sit down beside you. You wish that he wouldn't. Not when your husband has only just left. You glance at the door on the far end as if Mycroft might make a sudden re-appearance and take offence or get upset about you sitting with another man. The waiter clears his throat and shifts his position. “You’re friendly. Do you do this with everyone?” you ask. “Sit by them and keep them company?”

 

The waiter ignores your question. You frown. Mycroft does that sometimes, as if what you’ve just said is so stupid that he’s not even going to acknowledge it. It’s one of his least appealing traits. “What’s this you’re writing?” the waiter says, tapping at your postcard. 

 

 _“Oh,_ it’s just a little note I'm sending to one of my friends about the holiday my husband and I are on,” you say casually. You hope that by mentioning Mycroft the waiter won’t use this chance to make a move on you. You’re flattered, but, and in spite of his many faults, your husband Mycroft is the only one you will ever feel a love for this deeply. 

 

The waiter’s eyes study the postcard for a moment longer, before he leans back again. “If you give it to me then I can send it,” he announces.

 

“Oh, I haven’t finished it yet.” The waiter gestures that you should do so and feeling startled and flustered you turn your attention to the postcard. You have to read bits of it out loud to process how far you’ve gotten, _and,_ on occasion, feeling embarrassed you glance at the waiter. “Sorry.” He smiles at you in a toothy fashion. It reminds you of the silly look that Mycroft gets on his face whenever he watches old family films of his, especially of when he and Sherlock were younger. You’re just about to give Molly further regards and sign your name when you hear a voice near by say, “Oh, she’s writing one of those again. She loves them doesn’t she?” Your pen goes astray and you end up drawing a big line across the postcard. You let out a little distraught breath and fling your pen down. You’d nearly finished it! A woman, with strawberry blonde hair that curls around her shoulders and bright blue-green eyes and who you think might be the waiter’s boss, stands by him. “Such a busy little bee aren't you F/N?” You frown at her. You don’t know why she’s said that or remarked upon the fact that you write postcards. Has she been watching you too? She looks back to the waiter. “Yes, as I’ve told you before she likes to be on her own, but we get her interacting with the others by playing games and music. I think she thinks that she’s doing some of the others a favour.” The woman smiles indulgently. 

 

Who’s she talking about? She can’t be talking about you can she? You get that feeling in your stomach again. Whenever you’re with Sherlock and you get it he describes it like you’re on the wrong path and you need to find the right one again. Feeling confused, like every time you get it, you stare at the postcard. Your hands are suddenly in front of you and they appear to be shaking. “Y-You ruined my postcard.” The waiter’s attention goes back to you. You sense rather than see the alarm that’s radiating off him. “You ruined it!” You raise your tone in anguish. Your hands shake against the table, but it’s like they do so of their own accord. The tea in the cup sloshes upwards. Droplets rise in the air, before they fall back down again. Amazingly none of them splash onto the table. 

 

The waiter’s hand goes to your arm. You shrug him off you. “We’ll go to your room and get another one. It’s all right F/N.” 

 

“I'm not going anywhere with you. I just want to be on my own right now.” You feel breathless and frightened. 

 

“Come.” The waiter stands, takes your postcard and puts his coat back on. “Come.” Your legs obey him, before your mind’s even decided to. Together you leave the woman and the room through the closest door and make your way down the narrow hallway with its light green walls. 

 

“That was probably your fault you know?” you call after him. “She doesn’t like me because you’re slacking off and not doing your job properly. You’re getting me into trouble,” you finish in a wary tone, feeling dissatisfied with him. 

 

The waiter doesn’t say anything, but you think that you see something about his shoulders grow tense. 

 

You reach your room at the end of the hallway-number one with its bright f/c door that looks like a door you’d expect to find at the front of a house-and make your way inside it. The waiter gestures that you should sit down on your bed and you do so nervously. You can’t remember why he’s with you. You’d probably just asked if he’d collect a tray from your room or something. You frown. You can’t remember using room service, but then what other purpose would a _waiter_ have for being there? Besides, the days all roll into one here. You feel a little comfort from being in your room too. Your room with its soft blue bedding and brown and white checked throw-you’ve been there so long because of Mycroft’s work trip that it’s starting to feel like your room at home. There’s a framed photo of Mycroft on the light wooden cabinet by the side of the bed just in case you miss him during the day, a tapestry that’s hung up by the bed of you with all your friends and that expensive hand wash that Mycroft always buys you is in a white bottle by the sink. On top of the darker wooden cabinet are sweets and chocolate along with more postcards, your favourite book, a notepad you rarely write in these days and more toiletries, whilst all of your clothes are kept in the wardrobe just by it. Two chairs lie either side of the cabinet and wardrobe, whilst a window lets in the day’s light. It is to the dark cabinet that the waiter goes to, but to your surprise, rather than picking up a fresh postcard he’s got the small bottle of lavender oil that you keep there in his hand when he turns to you again. 

 

“You should put that down,” you tell him, “My husband won’t be happy if you break it.” Your fingers curl up a little against the duvet. Once more you long for Mycroft and home. 

 

A glimmer of pain flashes across the man’s face. You wonder about his personal life. What lurks there that’s causing him to look like that? “Just thought it might help,” he murmurs, not looking at your eyes as he comes across and crouches down before you. Very gently he takes both of your wrists and draws your sleeves up one by one, before he dabs a bit of lavender oil on each. 

 

“I'm married,” you tell him, noticing how nice the smell is, but not wanting to be lulled into a false sense of security because of it. 

 

“I know,” the waiter says. He looks at you then and his blue eyes chink with an unmistakable agony as his lips re-arrange themselves into a half-smile. 

 

His expression makes your breath curl up inside your chest, and, wanting to help him, you touch at his hair lightly with the back of your hand, just brushing at the edge of it. “I'm sure there’ll be someone out there for you too.”

 

The waiter looks down for a long moment. “Come,” is what he finally says, “Let’s go back.” He gets heavily to his feet and returns the lavender oil to the top of the cabinet. You smile at him when he turns to you again, glad that he’s taking your gentle rejection of him so calmly. He returns the smile, even though his eyes still look sad. The two of you return to the restaurant. 

 

*

 

It’s much later and you’re in your room again. Mycroft still hasn’t returned. You’re in bed already. You can still smell the lavender oil on your wrists. You think of the waiter and a tear runs down your cheek. You’re pretty sure that he wouldn't leave you on your own this late if you were with him and you have a sudden moment of seeing you both sitting on the bed, the waiter firmly gripping onto your hand as you recite all your woes out to him. The waiter’s face morphs into Mycroft’s, strangely quickly, and you let out a sigh. You’re not happy, but you can’t do anything about it. Not if your husband won’t listen. You roll around.


	2. Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flashback to your diagnosis and the plan you're trying to hold on to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support. :) I'm really glad that this story's already starting to have an impact on people. If you've got any questions then please just ask. :)

**Three Years Ago**

 

Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The words don’t necessarily come as a surprise to you. Oh, they’re still a shock to you yes. But after two years of trying to get proper tests done and coming up against doctors who think that you surely must have depression, a point which both Mycroft and you have fought against and a long period of time before that when you’d begun to get increasingly worried as you started to forget things and be late for appointments, the diagnosis is hardly unexpected. Still, it makes you retreat to your mind, which all too soon won’t be what you want it to be, and makes something inside you get ready for the fight ahead. You swallow. Opposite you in the consulting room is your blonde haired doctor-Lyn Reid-with her serious green eyes and slightly smudged pink lipstick. She’s sitting by the side of her desk in a blue spinning chair. You can’t help but think that before long that chair will be able to spin more efficiently than your mind will, before you curse yourself for indulging in your own bitterness. There is no time for that now. You have to do damage control. You look at Mycroft who exhales in his grey suit. His hand, which he’s got on top of yours on the arm of the uncomfortable and too wide chairs you’re sitting on shifts. You can feel the heat between you disappearing as he does so. You let out a breath and look away. He doesn’t look at you, but you don’t need him to, to know that on the inside he’s absolutely terrified right now. He’s been trying to push the prospect of you having this disease away you know. Trying to bury his head in the sand about it and trying to ignore every symptom you’ve displayed that has matched that of the disease head on. You on the other hand have been trying to plan for this possibility, not being able to ignore it all since it is happening inside your own body and knowing that the time to think about it is now when you can still do so relatively clearly. It is the emotions that interfere with such thoughts now, more than the actual forgetting. You swallow again. Lyn is saying something. You think that it might be something to do with plagues and tangles, both of which are thought to be responsible for cell death and tissue loss with someone with Alzheimer’s, but you’re too deep in thought to pick it out properly. You only begin to realize that she’s asked you a question when her mouth purses into a prompting position. Your lips part uncertainly. Your e/c eyes are slightly scared and frozen beneath your h/c hair, your body betraying the calm that you’d rather you were displaying. 

 

“F/N? I was just asking if there’s any questions you want to put to me right now?” Lyn asks you. 

 

She sounds like she’s bringing your appointment with her to an end and Mycroft must get the same feeling, for he asks her in an affronted fashion, “Don’t you have any literature that you can give us? Any contacts, so that we can begin to deal with all this?” His hand lifts off yours. 

 

“Mycroft,” you murmur, wanting him to try and calm down. You attempt to take his hand, but he doesn’t let you.

 

Instead he just draws himself up even more. “My wife’s been given life-changing news and you expect us to just walk out of here and deal with this all by ourselves?”

 

The look that Lyn gives you then, sad, but resolute, tells you that this is a common practice. These might be so-called modern times, but people are still walking out of hospitals and feeling isolated and alone, despite the overcrowding of such places. 

 

“Mycroft,” you mutter again, before you grip onto the arm of your chair tightly when you start to feel dizzy. Suddenly Mycroft’s holding onto your hand again. You think that he might be saying something to you, but you can’t hear it properly. Until suddenly everything clears once more and you become aware of Mycroft’s fingers tightening upon your hand. Aware of your pounding heart beneath your f/c fluffy top, which now feels uncomfortably itchy. Aware of the fact that your jeans suddenly feel like a form of suppression. Aware of Mycroft saying the treatment you’ve been given is ridiculous even though it must happen the same for everyone who’s just been diagnosed. What makes you special? You wonder, before your eyes hone in on the green of the potted plant on the windowsill behind Lyn. Suddenly it’s too vivid to you. You’re all too aware that it’s alive and that it’s probably far healthier than you are in that moment. The droplets of water on its too green leaves seem to taunt you. You feel sick. You’re thirty-two and suddenly you can’t think about the plan, about the control you’ve tried to take, so that this moment would be an easier one. All you can think about is that this is not supposed to be happening to you. You wallow in your self-pity. If you ever had the words ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ directed at you then you should be in your sixties at least. You feel hot, panicky and sick. 

 

“I know this all must seem very sudden to you and there’s no cure,” Lyn says clumsily, looking rather awkward now and only half-meeting your gaze-already your disease is defining you in other people’s eyes. Mycroft, protective as ever, lets out a growl of frustration at the way she’d just phrased it. “But there’s medication we can put you on to manage its effects the best that we can. There are trials being done,” she says, trying to find a silver lining when there isn't one, trying more than that to calm your husband. 

 

Mycroft takes up the discussion of trials eagerly. It appears that he too wants to find a silver lining and your heart sinks. You’re going to have to work hard to get him ready for all this. Lyn, stunned by his enthusiasm when he’s usually so placid, backtracks a bit. Evidently she hadn’t wanted to get him thinking so positively. She says that she’d rather just get you started off on your recommended medication first and then perhaps, depending on how that goes, discuss a trial at that point.

 

Mycroft seems a little off-put by her attitude and you can tell that he thinks she’d just been trying to dupe you both with false promises. You can tell though, at the determination that lurks beneath his eyes that the possibly of trials is one he’s put somewhere important in his mind palace, starring it and underlining it several times. 

 

You zone out as they continue their conversation. You've already decided what you think about trials. But one thought floats from the sea of your mind and into port. “Children,” you say, causing Lyn to abruptly break off from what she’d been saying and Mycroft to look at you. “We were”- you glance at him, cursing yourself for this emotional reaction. You look back at Lyn again. The expression on her face says it all. She’s looking at you and seeing the batty Alzheimer’s patient who’d been hoping to have children. You swallow again, as you suddenly remember telling her about how your mother had died of the disease when there had been a discussion of Alzheimer’s and whether there might be a genetic link in your family or not. You now realize that if you had a child then you’d be risking them having it too. There’s no way you want to. Not now you know for sure. To soften the blow that, that brings you remind yourself that you have to keep thinking of the plan and get to your feet. You can sense Mycroft looking at you. Feel the mixture of uncertainty and alarm that’s upon his face. Not even he knows how you’re going to react to this. Perhaps it’s that, that calms you down. The fact that in his eyes you’re an anomaly for once, unpredictable, and you don’t want to be causing him any more distress than you’re already doing. You need to take control now and you remove your hand from underneath his, smooth down your clothes and announce, “Well, thank you for telling me. But I think it’s time that we went home.”

 

Mycroft tries to re-claim your hand, but you dodge him. “My dear,” he appeals to you as if you don’t know how important this is and you should be listening to whatever Lyn has to say. No matter how bad it might make you feel. 

 

You clear your throat. “Come Mycroft,” you command. He gets a little awkwardly to his feet, his hand reaching for his umbrella that’s resting on the wall on his other side. 

 

“Before you go,” Lyn says, stretching a hand out towards you. Both Mycroft and you look at her. “You should take your prescription with you. I’ll print it off.”

 

“Fine,” you say in a surly voice that you haven’t used since you were a teenager and certainly never since you’ve met Mycroft. You shift your position. Mycroft looks at you as if he’s afraid that you might bolt. Lyn turns back to the computer that’s on her desk in relief and the printer makes one hell of a noise as it begins to print out the name of the medicine you’ll be taking. 

 

“How strong will the medicine be?” Mycroft asks Lyn, seemingly having decided that you’re not going to run off for the present and that he should ask any questions, whilst he still has the chance to. 

 

Lyn looks grateful at him doing so. “It’ll be a medium dose to start off with, but if the side effects are too disruptive then we can put F/N on a lower one.” She looks in between you both. 

 

“I'm sure it will say so on the packaging, but what _are_ the side effects?” Mycroft asks Lyn. Once more Lyn looks glad for him keeping the conversation going. You stand there, still feeling like you want to leave. You just need to get somewhere quiet, preferably your bedroom, compartmentalize all this emotional crap and focus on the plan, remind yourself of every detail of it, so that you don’t go wrong. You chew on your lip. You really hope that you haven’t forgotten any of it. You don’t feel as if you have, but now that you’ve officially been diagnosed with this disease and you know for sure that this is why your mind feels so strange these days… 

 

“It might make you feel a little sick, put you off your food,” Lyn says, looking at you now and drawing you in properly as if to remind you that yes, this is all about you despite the fact that Mycroft and her have largely been talking about it as if you aren't even there. Once more you feel a stab of annoyance at your emotions. You can’t resent Mycroft now. Your eyes go to him. He can’t seem to meet your gaze and you feel something grow into an unsettled state inside your stomach. You know what he’s trying to do. Already he’s trying to be the strong one, to not let you feel his pain and you feel determined even more to go through with your plan. You need to look after him you think. 

 

The printer ejects the paper as if it too doesn’t belong inside it just as much as the Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t belong inside you. Lyn plucks at the sheet, tearing off the hole filled strip on its side, before she hands it to you. You just mumble a quick thank you, not even looking at it as you make to turn around again. 

 

“F/N?” Mycroft says, his voice rising into a quaver. 

 

Your whole body stiffens and you swallow. “Yes?” you say irritably. You just want to get out of there. Can’t he feel that? Feel that you’ve been in this room far too long as it is?

 

“Don’t you think you should ask any questions about your medicine if you have them?” he asks. 

 

“I'm sure if I have any questions then I can just book another appointment or call Lyn or something.” You look over your shoulder. Lyn, willing to do that much at least, nods as if to say, ‘Of course you can.’ You swallow and turn your head away from her once more. 

 

You can hear the shift of Mycroft’s feet against the floor. “Very well,” he says. You let out a breath of relief. You’re barely out in the corridor however when Mycroft plucks the paper out of your hand and gives it a quick once-over. You can see the words being added to his mind palace. The mind palace that, unlike your feeble mind shed, which already has its fair share of cobwebs, will never deteriorate and crumble into dust. You feel jealous of him for a moment, but it quickly fades. He’ll be the one looking at you when you no longer recognize him after all. “I’ll deliver this. You go back to the car.” He claps you on the shoulder and begins to move off. 

 

You nod, but you feel weirdly isolated as you begin to make your way, like a bomb whose timer has just been set off. You can’t take in the other people bustling about, apparently so busy. The nurses in their blue scrubs, the patients wandering about, visitors trying to find the right ward or section, slips of paper with information on in their hands. Not when you’ve just been told what you have. It may not have been unexpected, but a part of you had still _hoped-_

 

A muscle tightens in your jaw and you bite down hard upon your lip, trying to get yourself together as you head out through the automatic doors and into the fresh air. You can’t think about past hopes now, _or_ what you’d wanted. This is the situation you’ve been given and you have to try and get on with it. Your pace quickens as you see one of Mycroft’s familiar work cars waiting for you. 

 

“Mycroft will be with us in a minute,” you inform the driver, as you clamber into the back seat and slide across to the far end, “He just had to do something.” Your mind is cruel enough to give you a picture of Mycroft breathing laboriously as he leans against the wall of the hospital, just having delivered your prescription. You picture him with his eyes closed, his mind wishing that he lived in a reality different from this one and you get close to growing hysterical again. The only way you can get yourself out of it is by thinking of the plan. 

 

The driver-Andrew-a man in his late fifties with short, silver hair and dark brown eyes nods, his white-gloved hands tapping absent-mindedly against the steering wheel. 

 

When Mycroft comes into view once more he’s talking quickly on his phone to someone. His umbrella is hooked over one arm. The conversation goes on longer than it takes him to get to the car and rather than get inside it he stands outside, the fingers of his free hand clattering against the bonnet every now and then. The sound of them irritates you because they interfere with all your thoughts, which are hard enough to cling onto as it is. 

 

When the conversation finally comes to an end Mycroft puts the phone away in the inside pocket of his jacket and opens the car door. He gives you a look of apology as he sits down, shuffling his umbrella in between his knees. You look out of the window on your side. You don’t know what to say to him right now. You’d tried to think of something if it came to this, but now it has there don’t seem to be any adequate words. _‘Sorry for doing this to you,’_ maybe? All you know is that it’s easier to be in your head with your own thoughts and your plan rather than try and make sense of the diagnosis in the back of this car with him. 

 

“Home please Andrew,” you hear Mycroft say to the driver. 

 

“Yes sir,” Andrew replies smartly, glad no doubt to be doing something at last. The engine purrs back into life. 

 

You wriggle closer to the door. One of your hands is still on the seat in between Mycroft and you, as if it doesn’t want to heed your need to withdraw right now or be apart from your husband. You’re just about to pull it towards you at last when Mycroft grasps at it, covering it with his and tucking your fingers away neatly inside of your palm. You look at him in surprise. Usually he’s not one for public displays of affection. His jaw is tense, telling you that he’s aware of what he’s doing. But his eyes are looking dead in front of him, as if he’s fascinated by the back of the car seat. You bite at your lip and look away from him. Your breaths feel tight in your chest. Its been a while, probably not since those first few months you’d dated him in fact, that you’ve sat in the middle of a car in order to be close to him. But suddenly, as much as you don’t want to cry and bring everything-all your fears and the unfairness of it all-to the surface right now, as much as you just want to focus on the plan because that is all you have to cling onto, you want to be there for him in any way that you can. You slip off your seatbelt and shift across. Mycroft looks at you only half in surprise and lets you put your seatbelt on across your lap, before he takes your hand in his again, this time moving it to his lap. Andrew’s eyes look momentarily at you both through the windscreen mirror but neither Mycroft or you pay him any attention. Already feeling the tears beginning to come you scrunch your eyes shut and tilt your head against your husband’s shoulder, whilst he grips at your hand. 

 

*

 

“I can make us a cup of tea?” Mycroft suggests as the pair of you move through the black door and inside the redbrick Kensington house. The house is large with three floors in all, including the ground one, but the top tends to be used for storage. Mycroft and you mainly stick to the first two. Each room is spacious and open, but something about them, especially the sitting room with its cream and rich red colours that grow warm in the firelight, still feel cosy and comfortable to you. Whilst the vast garden outside is usually kept neatly trimmed and pristine. 

 

“I thought you were going back to work?” You turn to look at him, as he closes the door, before he slides his umbrella into its stand. 

 

He shakes his head, looking heavy. “I'm not going back there today.”

 

You feel suddenly choked with gratitude. But, feeling like you have to give him an out if he wants, you say, “You can you know? You don’t have to stay just because of me and what’s happened. I mean we’d kinda been expecting that outcome anyway.”

 

He looks at you knowingly then. He realizes that you’re trying to be strong for him, as much as he’s trying to be the same for you. “I’ll go and make the tea.” He trudges off to the kitchen at the back of the house. 

 

You let out a soft breath as you stare after him, before you go up the stairs on the left, your feet soft against the blue carpet. You intend to just take a few minutes for yourself. You sit at the bottom of the bed, on top of the white duvet and let out a few deep breaths, trying to get yourself together. 

 

Mycroft comes in a few moments later, carrying your cup of tea, to find you with your hands pressed on your jeans as your body hunches forward. You seem to be trying to stop yourself from trembling or crying or both. 

 

“Oh my dear.” Mycroft swoops towards you at once. He puts the tea on the floor close to you, crouches before you and holds both of your hands in between his. You sniffle. “I was ringing work before if you were wondering. Telling them that I wouldn't be back in today and upgrading your security level to the highest available”-

 

“Just in case I get lost? I'm not stupid.” You can’t help this. This spark of anger. It escapes you, before you can pull it back inside you like a firework that you’re trying damn hard not to let off properly. 

 

He rubs at your hands. “I know you’re not.” You sniff again. He pulls you forwards and as you come off the bed and in between his knees you bury your head on top of his shoulder momentarily, before you rest your chin on it instead. “You can’t ignore what’s happening. Not any more,” he says, as if you’ve been doing exactly the same as him and trying to push it all away. “I know we both want to”- his voice breaks and you instantly forgive him for being oblivious of the state of mind that you’ve been trying to hold on to-“But we can’t. That’s the real reason I can’t go back to work. If we linger or hesitate for a second than that’s another moment wasted when we could be trying to dim your pain. To ensure that you suffer as little as possible.” His face turns dark now and you know that he’s remembering what Lyn had said about the disease being incurable. 

 

“I know.” You pull back, take a deep breath. “I don’t want to do that either. I just-I just couldn't look at the medicine's name and talk about things at the hospital. I just needed to come home and think first.” He brushes back your hair. You think that he understands this. “Mycroft thank you.”

 

“What for?” he asks. 

 

You duck your head. “Coming with me. I know I kept telling you not to, but”-you look back at him-“It was really good to have you there and it’s nice to have you here now.” 

 

He kisses you briefly. “About the matter of children”- he says as he pulls back.

 

“Don’t.” He looks at you concernedly. “I know we’re trying to be open, but I just can’t talk about that right now.” _I can’t talk about that or I really will fall apart._ He takes you in his arms again. Your eyes blink towards the wall. Mycroft’s hands feel firm upon your back. You feel safe with him, but you can’t help but feel worried about what’s to come despite the fact that you’ve been trying to just be sensible and remain focused on the plan. 

 

You pull your head back and suddenly one of your biggest fears is tumbling out of you in a broken voice, “One day I'm going to be more stupid than a goldfish. You might not love me any more.” That’s one of the things that you selfishly worry about. That you’re preparing him for all this when in the end you might not even need to. He might not love you any more. He might have already walked away, too disgusted, too _repulsed_ by what you’re going to become, _or,_ even worse, he might stubbornly stay with you, but not do as you want him to, torturing himself right until the very end. 

 

“Don’t say that,” Mycroft scolds you, gripping onto your shoulders. 

 

“But it’s”-

 

“It’s not true.” He pulls you close to him again and one of your hands goes to his waist to steady yourself. “There are many things that will have to be considered because of what’s happened today. But you will never be that and I will never ever think of you as that. Okay?”

 

“Okay.” You pull back. One of your hands goes to cup at his cheek. Just looking at him makes you feel teary again and you can tell by the way that his throat bobs that he’s feeling emotional too. “I just can’t stand the fact that one day I'm going to see all this”-you gesture at his face, at the odd strands of auburn hair, which threaten to fall out of place, the blue eyes, which are currently looking at you in concern, the beautiful, precious marks he’s got on his skin, his freckles, the slight lines beneath his eyes, the long nose and those serious, frowning lips, which are slightly pursed as they wait for you to finish-“And not know how much all of it means to me.”

 

He lets out a sound and pulls you to him at once. He makes several firm strokes against your back as you cry softly against him. You’re scared about what’s to come, angry that this is happening to you and that you can’t have the happily ever after you’d envisioned for yourself with children and everything, angry that you can’t give him that either. You’re terrified of losing yourself, as well as being determined just to focus on the plan. But the thing that frightens you the most is not recognizing those who are dearest to you. You just can’t bear the thought of all that. Not only not knowing them, but not being able to help them deal with how they’ll feel about it all. Especially Mycroft. Its taken him long enough to get this far, to open up to you, to fall in love. You know that his ideal situation would be to be in work right now, trying to be normal, trying to bury his head in the sand again and you know that the only reason he isn't is because he’s decided, no matter how hard it would be, to put your own needs above his own. You don’t want him to withdraw again. You don’t want to not know that’s happening and not be able to do anything about it. That’s why the quicker you can carry out the plan the better that everything will be. Just as you’d helped him take baby steps through the process of love, guiding him, telling him what was appropriate in what situation and letting your own instincts lead the way, you now have to make sure that he’s ready to say goodbye to you. 

 

It’s a long time after you’ve thought that when Mycroft finally pulls away again and says, “I know”-he brushes your hair back from the sticky spots on your face where it’s clinging to the path of your tears-“That you probably don’t want to consider this right now. But we need to figure out when and how we should tell everyone.” Your lips part. “I can do it if you’d like?” Once more you can tell that he’s saying this to be kind to you rather than because it’s what he wants to. You have a vision of him suddenly, awkwardly trying to get what you’ve been diagnosed with out in the 221B sitting room. You picture Sherlock’s look of impatience, as he just wants his brother to spit it out, so that he can try and figure out a course of action, picture John’s bracing look, the one he wears when he’s trying to be strong, a soldier. See Molly and Greg, who might have been invited there too, faces crumpling as soon as your husband finally manages to say what he needs to. See Mrs. Hudson feeling oddly sorry for Mycroft and sending him a look of pity that he doesn’t even want. 

 

You shake your head. “No, it’s all right. I can do it on my own.”

 

“You’re sure?” Mycroft both sounds and looks relieved. “I don’t mind being there.”

 

“I'm sure,” you tell him. It will be for the best anyway you think, for the plan. 

 

*

 

You go around to 221B the next day. Fearing bad news you’d taken a couple of days off work for this exact purpose. Mycroft’s holed up in his office, probably thinking of your Alzheimer’s, whilst trying to work. You can’t know that right at this moment in fact he’s made the decision to call his parents and tell them about your condition. He might be able to get away with letting you tell his brother, you’re Sherlock’s friend after all, but he knows that Mummy would not be happy if she heard the information from you and not from him. He’d be in her bad books again and he’s been in them far too much over the years to want that to happen again. 

 

For the longest of times he hears the dialling tone, and, thinking that he’s going to have to try again later he lets out a massive sigh just at the same time that his mother finally decides to answer the phone. “Mycroft?” 

 

“Oh, hello Mummy.” 

 

“I could tell that it was you just from that long exhale. Whatever have you got to be sighing about now?” 

 

Mycroft can tell that she thinks he’s just overreacting about something or another, probably a matter at work, which he’s now going to take out on her by saying that he can’t be expected to call her all the time when he’s got so much on. Instead he begins, “You know of course that we've been trying to work out what’s wrong with F/N and why she hasn’t been feeling herself lately? Or acting like she would usually?” Even just saying those words makes Mycroft’s breath feel shuddery inside his chest. 

 

 _“Yes…”_ Mummy says cautiously. 

 

“Well, yesterday F/N had another hospital appointment and we finally found out what’s wrong with her.”

 

An impatient silence meets his ears, before his mother finally utters, “Go on.”

 

Mycroft swallows once, then again. He squeezes his eyes shut and silently begs his breathing to get itself together, to become smoother and less jagged, but his pleas don’t work. “She’s got Alzheimer’s Mummy. She’s losing her mind.”

 

“Oh Mycroft!” 

 

Mycroft doesn’t hear much of what she says next. He thinks that she says something about how she’ll come down with Father soon, so that they can discuss everything and support you both. He’s vaguely aware of himself protesting, before he, in a robotic fashion, moves the phone away from his ear and disconnects the call. 

 

It takes a very long time for him to go back to work after that. 

 

Meanwhile at 221B Mrs. Hudson says, “Oh F/N, come in dear,” as soon as she opens the door to you. Today she’s wearing a plum cardigan over a grey dress that has tiny pictures of cherries on it. 

 

You smile at her gratefully, your eyes trying to suck in every aspect of her face, whilst you still have the chance to remember what she looks like and how good she’s been to you. Before you get the chance to do much more than step inside and close the door however there comes a clattering of feet upon the stairs and little seven-year-old Rosie Watson is hurtling down them, her blonde hair flying out behind her, followed closely by her father John who looks harried. His blond hair looks rumpled; despite its military cut and the dark grey jacket he’s got on over a blue and white checked shirt is slightly lopsided. 

 

“Aunt F/N!” Rosie says as soon as her eyes fix upon you, looking the picture of happiness in her pink dress and denim jacket. Despite the fact that you’re not actually related she’s always called you that. 

 

“Hey sweetheart,” you say, trying to be calm and not reveal that anything’s up for her sake. “Aren't you supposed to be in school?”

 

“I'm ill.” 

 

“But still well enough to try and mess around with Uncle Sherlock’s chemicals apparently,” John says, his vision mostly fixed on his daughter. 

 

You grin, but it’s not long before your expression becomes a more serious one. How are you supposed to tell everyone about your condition in front of Rosie? 

 

As if he senses the current problem that you’re facing Sherlock comes downstairs in the next moment, stopping just behind John who’s perched at the bottom of them. “F/N,” he eyes you seriously in his dark suit and white shirt. 

 

“Sherlock,” you get out, feeling a sudden burst of relief inside you. “Can-Can I have a word?” you ask. 

 

He nods, but your words seem to have caught John’s attention. He looks at you with a furrowed brow. “Is everything all right?” He’s trying to observe you as he looks at you, trying, as ever, to be able to see everything that Sherlock no doubt can. Knowledge is especially important to John you know when one of his friends might be in danger. 

 

You try to smile, but end up swallowing a couple of times instead. It’s so hard to fool any of them. 

 

“What’s wrong Aunt F/N?” Rosie asks, her eyes serious as she looks at you and you wish they wouldn't be. You want her to stay innocent for as long as possible. 

 

“Nothing sweetheart.” You try and smile bravely at her. “I just need to speak to Uncle Sherlock in private for a moment.” You look back at the consulting detective, almost pleadingly. 

 

“Right then.” Sherlock waves his hands. “Mrs. Hudson if you could entertain John and Rosie? Perhaps with pictures of your old holiday snaps? We won’t be needing tea.” He’d been looking at his landlady, but now he looks back to you. “Come,” he says. 

 

You nod with a tight throat and begin to follow him upstairs. 

 

Rosie begins to protest at once, but between them Mrs. Hudson and John usher her into the former’s flat, closing the door behind them.

 

As soon as you reach the sitting room Sherlock goes to sit in his usual armchair. You follow him, thinking of taking up John’s chair automatically, but then, remembering about what you should really be starting to focus on, even more so than your diagnosis, you go and drag the client’s chair across instead, sitting down on it. 

 

“You've been diagnosed,” Sherlock concludes from the difference in your behaviour. 

 

“Yes. Alzheimer’s.” You nod.

 

Sherlock looks gutted at that. You sense that though he’d suspected such a thing he’d been hoping for a less terminal outcome and one where he could take more positive action against it. You suddenly wonder if Mycroft had looked that way yesterday at the hospital and find that you have to swallow and momentarily look away, before you look back at Sherlock again. 

 

You stand, as does Sherlock, and slowly you hug one another. Sherlock kisses the top of your hair, before you both sit back down again. 

 

“Anyway,” you go on, getting to the real point you feel you’ve come here for and saying it as if you haven’t just admitted to having a disease that will rob you of so many things, “Before the diagnosis I thought about everything and did a bit of research just in case I did have it.” Your hands fist up on your lap. How you’d been hoping that you’d be able to just get rid of all that research, scrunch it all up with a watery laugh and delete anything that you’d saved about it on your computer. You could have been celebrating with Mycroft last night, drinking a glass of champagne, before he lifted you up in his arms and spun you around and around, tears of both joy and relief in each of your eyes. You take a deep breath. You have to focus on the future now, not what could have been. “It’s not going to be pretty,” you say. 

 

Sherlock looks like you’ve kicked him right across the cheekbones, before he admits, “I know. I’ve done some research too.” 

 

You nod, feeling grateful that you don’t have to explain about that and can just continue to get to your main point. “You remember how the first time we met I had a case for you?” Sherlock nods. “Then I came to live at 221C and everything was just so”- you break off. You can’t think of how exciting that time had felt for you now. How fresh and brilliant it had all been for you. “Well, I have a case for you again. My final case.”

 

*

 

You’re at home, eating dinner at the table in the dining room when Mycroft sweeps in his navy suit, a white shirt and dark tie. He’d got back from work about quarter of an hour ago and had kissed you on the cheek and gone on to inform you that he’d told his parents. You’d barely had a chance to wrap one arm around him, before he’d disappeared again. You’d looked after him sadly, but known that he just needed a minute, so you’d left him to it and got the dinner out instead. Now he comes back and sits opposite you, placing a load of literature off to the side of his plate. He looks different now, invigorated and excited about something instead of just sad. You eye him curiously.

 

“I phoned Lyn, told her of how stupid it was that she couldn't even offer us anything to read and she managed to dig these out. I went back to the hospital and picked them up.” He nods at the pile, whilst his hands gather up his knife and fork. Instead of beginning to eat though he looks at you. His eyes are sparkling with determination still. You swallow. This is the first time that you’re going to have to be hard on him about this and you know that there’s no way it can be the last. Not if you want things to go the way you do. Your eyes dip down. You don’t want to take his hope away. “There’s no need to look like that,” Mycroft assures you, not letting himself see what’s really on your mind once more, “I know Lyn said that she wanted to get you started on the approved medicine first, but there are many trials like she said. I’ve been doing some research and I really think that”-

 

Not bearing to listen to him any more you look up and say, “Mycroft I'm not going to be doing any trials.” He tilts his head, looking confused, his tongue sticking slightly out of his pursed lips. He rests his knife and fork back on the table again in what you sense is an automatic gesture. You take a deep breath and cover his hand with one of yours. You try and smile placatingly at him, your heart hoping that he won’t see this as a sign of you pushing him away. You’re just trying to do what’s right for him, what’s right for everyone. “What’s the point? I’ve got Alzheimer’s. No matter what I do I'm not”- you attempt to be blunter. It’s so hard to be gentle about this when it’s all so final. 

 

“So you’re not going to try? You’re not going to fight?” Mycroft tugs his hand back from yours and gets to his feet. You might as well have just burnt him. He looks at you as if he can’t believe what you’ve just said. You know then that after the phone call he’d had to make to his parents the thought of trials and some sort of miracle happening had been the only thing, which had got him through the rest of the day. 

 

“Of course I'm going to fight, but we have to be realistic about this”-

 

Mycroft’s heard enough. He rushes out of the room and upstairs. 

 

You push your dinner aside and just bury your head in your hands for a moment. The ticking of the clock is the only thing that you can hear. You take a couple of deep breaths and then you lower your hands again and get up. You head upstairs. You find Mycroft retching in the bathroom. Nothing’s come up because he hasn’t got anything in his stomach. He’s starved himself all day and been living off feeble hopes instead. Hopes that can’t sustain him any more. He clambers to his feet and looks at you as you enter. “Why won’t you fight?” he asks you with pained tears of confusion running down his face. 

 

“It’s like I’ve said”-you step forwards and rub at his arms now-“I _am_ going to fight. I want to hold onto who I am and the people I love for as long as possible.” You swallow a bit at that. It’s true of course, but not something that you’re strictly intending to do. “But love I”-your hand stills on his arm now, the other drops down to your side. You let out a little sigh-“I’ve got Alzheimer’s Mycroft. No matter what we throw at this it’s still a fight that we’re going to lose. I don’t see the point in taking up an expensive trial when”-

 

“You’re worried about wasting money?” Mycroft exclaims. “Because I swear”-

 

“I know.” Both of your hands start rubbing at his arms again. “I know you’d spend whatever was needed, but I'm not going to let you do that”-

 

 _“Why?”_ he asks in a strangled voice. 

 

“YOU KNOW WHY!” You explode suddenly, not being able to bear the way he’s behaving any more and Mycroft’s tears still on his face as if even they are listening. He looks devastated and hurt by the very sight of you. “I’ve told you. Because I'm going to die! Because you can’t control this Mycroft. Nobody can. You can tell me about every trial under the sun, but I am not going to agree to it and you need to promise me right now that when I get bad you will not parachute me into one.” You feel angry in that moment, so scared about him threatening to sabotage your plan just because he’s well meaning. 

 

“But”-

 

“I'm doing this my own way. I'm sorry, but I am. It’s for your own good as much as mine.” You look at him steadily. As he stares back at you, you can tell that he doesn’t see how what you’ve just said can be to anyone’s benefit. “Mycroft? _Please,”_ you urge, “You need to respect me on this. I know it’s hard, but I’ve done lots of research myself about this, before my diagnosis, just in case, and I know that none of those trials will truly help me”-

 

“But how can you-?” You raise a hand to stop him. 

 

“I know Mycroft because there is no cure. Those trials are just temporary bridges that might help the difficulties I’ll be in somewhat, but they won’t give what either of us want in the end. In all honesty the side effects that they have will just tire me out even more. They’ll just create a false sense of hope when we need to try and be realistic about all this.” 

 

“So you’re not even going to talk about this any further?” He shifts his position. “Not even going to give one of them a chance?” You just stare at him and seeing that your mind’s made up he simply moves past you with a bowed head out of the room. 

 

You turn and move out after him. He barely says a word to you all night. He just sits there, brooding in deep thought, whilst you attempt to read. The literature he’d brought home with him remains on the table, untouched. 

 

That night, when he’s finally fallen asleep in exhaustion you just watch him. The rise and fall of his chest and the colour of his skin, which almost looks blue in the light of the moon that pours through the gaps in the cream curtains. You know that you can’t erupt like that again, plan or no plan. You just have to keep walking a steady line if you can between following what you want to and respecting Mycroft’s confused feelings as he tries to make sense of it all. You know that after tonight he’ll be trying to puzzle through your odd behaviour. Trying to work out why anyone wouldn't want to take something that might alleviate the pain they’ll be going through, even if it’s only a little bit. You've wondered yourself on occasion, ever since you’d made the decision. But you know that the plan you have is ultimately the right one, and that’s what keeps you going as you too fall asleep.


	3. Musings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We catch up with Mycroft and see his side of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your support. :) 
> 
> Just a warning that this chapter also deals with the sensitive topic of miscarriage as well as our main theme.

**Present Day**

 

When Mycroft gets home from the care home that night, weary as he crosses the golden corn gravel driveway towards the lonely Kensington house where weeds are starting to rapidly push through by the front door and the hedges need clipping-he’d left it too late and suddenly summer was over and the colder, darker nights were setting in-it’s only when he steps into the hallway, switches the light on and closes the door behind him that some of the tension leaves him as his shoulders sink. It’s always like this on care home days, and since _every_ day is a care home day even with the hectic nature of his work every day is like this. A mixture of sadness about your situation, tension because he does not know how you’re going to react each time you see him, whether you’re going to see him as that blasted waiter that day or not and tiredness due to trying to cope with everything. He swipes a fatigued hand across his face, deposits his umbrella in its holder and then begins the process of shrugging his coat off. He’s just checking the pockets for anything that he might need to pull out when his fingers catch against something thin, but firm. It’s the postcard he sees. He’d put it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket initially when you’d both been on your way to your room in the hope that you’d forget all about it, but it had felt like it was pressing uncomfortably against his chest when he’d been sitting in the back of one of his usual black cars on the way home so he’d taken it out and put it inside his coat pocket instead. Now he hangs his coat up and takes the postcard into the sitting room. He flicks the light on, before he crosses the room. An armchair and a settee are either side of the black fireplace, but it is the small wooden chest of drawers next to the drinks cabinet that he’s interested in. He goes to it, opens the top drawer where he keeps all of your postcards in-there must be twenty there at least, all to your friends and never to him because you think that he’s there with you, something, which he can’t help but feel bitter about because he needs your guidance more than ever and he thinks that even if what you’d put was irrelevant to your situation it would probably help him right now. He adds the latest one to the pile. Another one, which says pretty much the same thing in your wonky and now disjointed handwriting. Then he closes it with a thud and turns his attention to the drinks cabinet.

 

Once the scotch has been poured, the curtains shut, fire lit and he’s taken off his jacket and flung it across the back of the settee he occupies the armchair. Whilst he sips at his scotch he goes back over everything once more. This is a regular occurrence too. Him going back over everything and tacking any updates on to the end of this continuously slow moving story. After you’d been diagnosed and all the strange behaviour, you not wanting to take any trials, Mycroft had frequently tried to breach the subject, but each time you’d pushed it away, saying exactly the same thing as you’d said then, you weren’t going to be taking any trials. You had no intention to. He hadn’t understood it, but he’d sensed the confusion that must be circulating through your mind, both the part that was fully there and the part that was already fading and tried to respect that and give you as much time as you needed to think and be alone in the evenings no matter how much his body had cried out that action needed to be taken. He’d hoped that you were writing your feelings down to get it out since you weren’t talking to him, though he hasn’t found anything around the house to suggest that you had been since. He’d tried to remind himself of your young age and that precious, but now poignant conversation he’d had with you one night, before all this when you’d just been generally talking and you’d said that although you didn't want there to be a mass outpouring of grief when you died or anything like that-you weren’t seeking fame-you wanted to be remembered by more than your small circle of friends. Your close family was all already gone. Your father having died from grief after your mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. You wanted to have done something you said. Something that would make your death be mentioned in the national newspapers. Wanted to have discovered something. If your death could not be mentioned in them then at the very least you wanted to be in a book where people would come across your name as they studied one day. That had been one of your childhood fantasies you’d said. He’d understood it, that sense of wanting to be important, feeling as if you mattered outside the people who knew you and who would always love you anyway. Understanding such a thing had made the fact that after your diagnosis, due to the fact that you’d become one of the youngest people in the UK to be diagnosed with the disease, you’d been in the paper all the more tragic. He’d never shown it to you. Your heart had been breaking enough as it was. He’d understood enough through that to know what a blow it must be and to realize that, that blow must have overshadowed the logical side of your mind, which would have surely made you see that going on a trial would have been one of the most sensible things that you could have done. You’d started to spend more time moping about whenever you weren’t at work, clearly feeling dispirited and he’d sensed that though you were still trying to be strong about everything one of the main matters that had upset you above anything regarding your diagnosis was filtering through. What such a matter was about was clear from the one companion you deemed always fit to have by your side, even more so than him in fact-a multi-coloured toy sausage dog that was made out of different coloured fabrics and meant for children. You’d bought it and nervously given it to him long before the diagnosis, when you’d wanted to discuss the option of having children with him, but not been sure how to start off the conversation. He recalls how he’d studied it for the longest of times. His own fingers had lifted up the dog’s ears, pushed the flaps of them back, not knowing what its significance was or why you’d given it to him. He’d looked at you, seen the hope in your face and dropped the toy dog with clumsy fingers as everything had made sense. His face had reddened. You’d smiled, picked the toy dog up and calmly led him into the sitting room. You’d sat down together on the settee and you’d explained that since your biological clock was ticking and that you were married now-you’d been so for two years at that point-it might be a good time to start having children. He’d been uncertain. He’d confessed to you that he’d been worried that by having a child with you it might lead onto another Eurus situation where he’d worry if the child showed any signs of being freakishly brilliant. He’d much rather that the child had your more normal genes. You’d been so reassuring. It wouldn't happen that way you said. Even if your child turned out to be of a genius like stature than it would be different this time because of everything that had been learnt from the whole Sherrinford debacle. If your child had to spend part of their life in an institution then you’d make it a home away from home and they’d receive all the love in the world in the hope that they’d finally be able to live in normal society once more. He’d still been a bit reluctant. He’d known how much it would hurt you if a child of yours had to spend _any_ time in an institution and he hadn’t wanted to put you through that or be in a position himself where he had to take control of things like that any more. Eurus will always be his sister, but it had come as a great relief to him in one sense when Sherlock and his parents had been in a position to visit her and he’d been able to take a step back. He hadn’t wanted to start that situation from scratch again. He’d wanted to enjoy his time with you and not have it weighted down with issues like that. But, after a few more discussions about it, he’d said that he was willing to try. The toy dog had been kept in your bedroom from then on, like a lucky mascot of sorts as it over-saw your love making sessions. The first Saturday after you’d gotten diagnosed you’d plucked at the toy again as you sat at the table in the kitchen. He’d been stood by one of the kitchen counters on the basis of making tea, but really he’d been watching you for some time. He hadn’t known what he could do or say to get you out of this, but he knew that he needed to say something, so he’d said, “F/N?” 

 

Your hand had grasped onto the toy more firmly and you’d looked at him. His throat had grown tight immediately. Your eyes had been fixing on him, but like they couldn't hone in properly and capture the true detail of his face. 

 

“I know!” you’d blurted out. _I know I should be focusing on the plan!_ He’d flinched. _On you. Not on my own selfishness._ There had come a knock on the door. You’d strode out of the room and upstairs, leaving the toy on the table. He’d picked it up and tried to follow after you. But the knock had come again, so he’d gone to answer the door. 

 

It had been Sherlock, and Mycroft had let one huff of breath out in greeting, before he’d turned back around again. He’d marched back into the kitchen, plonked the toy down upon the counter and finished making the tea. For Sherlock and him, rather than him and you now. _“Well?”_ Mycroft had said when he’d heard Sherlock moving about behind him. But when his little brother’s mouth had chosen to remain annoyingly silent he’d added, “What are you here for?” His body had been tense as he’d stirred the milk into the tea and waited for his brother’s reply. His heart had beat out an irregular rhythm inside of his chest. 

 

“I take it you’ve spoken about whether or not you should have children now F/N’s been diagnosed?” Sherlock had said as he’d fetched his tea, before he’d returned to his former spot once more. His eyes had surveyed his brother over the top of his white cup. 

 

Mycroft had observed his brother for a moment. Then he’d brought his own cup of tea to his lips and sipped at it. “I have attempted to have some sort of conversation with her yes, but she has not had that same willingness in return. In any case I dare say she might be right. What is the point of such talk? It is all hypothetical now.” 

 

“Why is it?” Sherlock had asked him. 

 

Mycroft’s brow had furrowed. “Because of F/N’s diagnosis of course.” 

 

“It’s a slow illness, which is unfortunate in some ways and good in others. I’ve already read a fair bit about it. It could be years before F/N really starts to deteriorate. If she got pregnant now then there’s really no reason why the both of you wouldn't be able to enjoy every aspect of parenthood, before that happened.” Mycroft had looked uncertain. “Just don’t think it’s no longer a possibility, whilst the disease is still manageable or the pair of you might face regrets.” Sherlock had finished his tea, left his cup on the nearest counter and departed from the house. 

 

Mycroft had stared after him for a moment and wondered if Sherlock had been talking to their mother or if it was something he’d come up with himself, but when he’d heard the sound of you crying from upstairs he’d gone up. 

 

You’d been on your side on the bed, fully clothed apart from your shoes with your back turned to him. He’d sat down carefully on the edge of the bed and rolled you onto your back with one hand. Your eyes and cheeks had been damp and you’d made this sort of spluttering noise as you’d looked at him. “F/N your diagnosis doesn’t mean”-

 

“Of course it does!” you’d snapped as if he was the stupid one. “Do you really want to look after two children?” You’d rolled on your side away from him again. The answer to your question was ‘No.’ Mycroft didn't want to have to look after a wife who wasn’t able to take care of herself and a child on top of that. Not after years of trying to manage his brother and Eurus. But he hadn’t wanted to give you the damning blow even though he’d sensed that you’d already known, so he’d left the room. 

 

You’d gone back to wearing protection during sex after that, but one night, a year after your diagnosis when you’d just done the last day you’d ever work he’d somehow managed to cheer you up just by being himself and you’d tumbled into bed together. He’d been inside you and it had all been over, before either of you had remembered that you were supposed to be using protection now. You’d gotten pregnant and although it had been scary news for Mycroft it had also been one of the happiest days of his life at just seeing how uplifted it made you. As if you had something good to focus on. But then of course the worries had set in. What if the child barely knew you before you started to get really ill? Would the stories that Mycroft and all your friends be able to tell him or her really be enough for them to feel like they knew their own mother? Worse still what if your child inherited the disease too? You’d gone so far as to consider an abortion. It wouldn't be fair you said for a child to go through all of that, or for Mycroft to either. But Mycroft had told you firmly that he could handle whatever came at him and that there was no way you were going to terminate the miraculous life growing inside you now. He’d tried to calm you down. But then one night-only about three months into the pregnancy-you’d woken up bleeding and in pain and Mycroft, in a panicked state, but trying, desperately trying to keep calm for you had taken you immediately to hospital. When you’d gotten there they’d found out that you’d suffered a miscarriage. It had been one of the worst nights of your lives and over the next few weeks you’d barely eaten anything. You’d just spent much of the day in bed, lying in an inconsolable fashion. Mycroft had been terrified that your body might just give out and decide that it didn't want to keep working any more. The only thing that would be worse than losing you bit by bit in the future was losing you all at once right then. You’d only snapped out of it when one day, after coming home from work and finding you in the same state he’d crouched by the side of the bed. You’d seen all the strain of everything on his face. Seen all the tears wavering in his eyes. Listened to his cracked voice as he’d begged, _truly_ begged you to eat something because he couldn't live with this situation any more and you’d let out a breath, lifted yourself up a little and wrapped your arms around his neck. He’d felt frightened again when his hands had gone around you in turn and he’d felt how small your frame had become. But then you’d eaten more and bit-by-bit things had started to grow a little easier. Together you’d planted a tree in the garden for your child and slowly, after building the process of it up by getting to know each other again-who these versions of Mycroft and F/N who had suffered such loss were-you’d begun to touch and make love, but always with protection.   
Your disease had started to become slowly more noticeable after that, almost as if the shock of everything and the loss had allowed it to creep further into the crevices of your mind when you’d both been distracted by other matters. Not working any more you’d been at home more frequently and Mycroft had started to notice things ending up in the wrong cupboards, cups of tea being made when others were yet to be fully drunk and the fact that you seemed to be more confused, mixing up a conversation on TV for one that was happening in real life. Coming home every day it had started to be a surprise as to what state he might find the house in. Mummy and Father had come on a visit once and watched after you when Mycroft was in work. He’d seen the strain that just that one day had, had on them when he’d come home and seen their faces, and, as much as he hated it after that day, and after a visit by Dr. Watson-on Sherlock’s behalf no doubt-had been forced to consider, for the first time, the option of putting you in a care home. He’d done plenty of research, sneaking off to read that in the study instead of spending time with you and feeling terribly ashamed of himself for even considering such things every time he watched your sleeping face at night. He’d worried too that he was making a dreadful mistake in even contemplating putting you into a care home. Not only had it seemed a dreadfully early point to be doing so, but he’d fretted something terrible that like he’d perhaps made a mistake in keeping Eurus locked up for as long as he had, a mistake in denying her the love and attention she’d needed, he would also be making a mistake in sending you off to a care home, so far away from your friends. For though there were care homes close by they weren’t suitable, and just like the ones that catered a little more for people with early-onset Alzheimer’s rather than elderly people who had the disease, Mycroft was not given the confidence he needed that all the staff were equipped with the necessary skills to deal with you as you’d deteriorate. In the end he’d decided that sending you to a care home that consisted of mainly elderly people was unfortunately the best choice. The staff there had more experience with the disease. He’d tried to put the whole process of sending you anywhere though off for as long as he could-in the mean time getting things like the power of attorney sorted out so that he would be able to make health and financial decisions on your behalf-but eventually he’d come to select the one you’re in now, which is close to Bell Wharf beach in Southend-on-Sea. He’d been wary at first about the proximity of the beach and road, from a safety perspective it looked a nightmare. But when you’d spotted the picture of the beach and nothing else when he’d been looking through the brochure one night and said how pretty it was he’d felt swayed. In any case he’d still have a security detail in place. You wouldn't be able to get up to too much mischief and you’d get far more entertainment out of looking through the windows at that home then you would at any of the more secluded ones. It was a compromise for him lumbering you with all the old people rather than ones who were closer to you in age. He’d also thought it one of the best ones to suit your needs, both presently and further down the line, for there was also a nursing unit at the home. With all those things added up together he’d felt like it would be worth putting you on the waiting list even though it would be a one hour and thirty-seven minute trip for him one way. He’d managed to get you next in the queue because of his position, so as soon as there had become a space available you’d been able to go there almost straight away and it is there that you have been ever since.   
He remembers how worried he’d been that first week you’d been there. How strange it had felt and still feels not to have you at home. To have no one again to come home to. It had made him cry and he’d felt selfish for doing so. It was for the best he told himself. The best for you and your health and safety in the long run. That hadn’t stopped him from feeling sad of course. But, trying to make sure that everything for you at least was all right he’d taken care to bring things in, in order to make your room more homely and to ask the staff numerous questions to ensure that your needs were being properly met. You’d had trouble sleeping at first. The staff knew this because the floor in your room has a hidden sensor inside it, so as soon as you’d left your bed they’d been able to attend to you and guide you back in. It had been terribly hard for him to visit you and then leave you again. It still is. But those first few weeks had been particularly straining. Particularly emotional. Particularly hard. Especially when you’d started to succumb to the disease even more. Started to tell yourself that you weren’t in a care home, that you were simply accompanying Mycroft on a work trip, as you’d done so many times before. You’d told yourself that story so much that you’d convinced yourself of it. The line between reality and fiction had started to blur. Mycroft had allowed it. In his opinion it is much better for you to think that the care home is a hotel that you’ll shortly be leaving, much better for you to have that _hope_ of leaving it in the first place and to think him a neglectful husband too caught up in work. Much better for you to blame him if that is what you want-God knows he feels he deserves the blame for putting you in a care home instead of facing an early retirement. He’d been tempted to bring you back home as soon as he’d seen you starting to go downhill, but Sherlock had persuaded him that it was for the best, that it would be too disruptive for you to go back and forth between the two, and that, in any case, it was no longer safe for you to be at home. Mycroft had known that, but it hadn’t stopped him from feeling guilty. He finishes off his scotch, packs the memories away and stands. 

 

Once he’s in bed he rolls onto his side. He tends to sleep best if he’s facing the side where you used to sleep on. He can’t know it, but you’re on your side in bed in the care home, facing exactly where he should be. If the two beds had merged in that moment then you’d both be exactly where you should be, close to being in each other’s arms again. Mycroft reaches across, switches off the light and faces another night, alone.


	4. Paranoia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As paranoia strikes you take drastic action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd really appreciate hearing any thoughts you have. :)

You’re being watched. You know you are. This morning there had been someone-you can’t remember now if it had been a man or a woman, but you know it had been someone-coaxing you into the restaurant, saying that breakfast was ready. You didn't need to be told that. You’re perfectly capable of fetching breakfast at whatever time you please. You’d become convinced that they wanted you out of your room, so that they could do something. You’d turned around and started to go back to your room. You’d tried to do such a thing straight away, but for some reason the hallway had seemed different and it had taken you twice as long. You’d cut your hand on the wall in your haste and panic. They’d followed you inside your room. Two of them this time. Two men? Two women? One man and one woman? You hadn’t been sure. They’d appeared like cloaked hooded monsters to you. All you’d known was that you’d found yourself suddenly sat on your bed. The people had started coming closer. You’d tried to fight them off, both with words and your hands. You’d been relieved when out of the corner of your eye you’d seen Mycroft, standing to the side of you, close to the bed. But Mycroft hadn’t done anything. 

 

“Why are you just standing there? Why are you smiling?” you’d yelled at him, half-rising desperately from the bed. “Do you enjoy seeing me like this?” You’d expected Mycroft’s expression to change into a more serious one at that. You feel sure that he’d do anything to protect you. But Mycroft had just carried on smiling in that same position. You’d reached out a hand towards him. That’s when the illusion of him had shattered and he’d disappeared. Something had flopped down onto the bedside cabinet and Mycroft himself had turned into a square photograph as he’d fallen down to the floor. You’d let out a whoosh of breath and crawled back with only the tapestry of your friends and you between the wall and you. You hadn’t understood what was happening, but you’d wanted to be as far away from everyone as possible. 

 

You don’t remember much after that. Someone had picked Mycroft up off the floor. Then they’d pulled you upward, something had been placed around your hand and breakfast. Now you’re back in your room. 

 

You have to get out. That’s what you keep thinking. Everything seems too close in your room. The entirety of the hotel feels like it’s pressing in on you. Usually you’d just go out when either Mycroft or one of your friends is around. Mycroft seems to prefer it that way for some reason. You feel a sudden surge of anger with him. No, you have to get out, and since Mycroft and none of your friends are here then you’ll have to do it by yourself. 

 

*

 

Mycroft’s in a state, but trying to keep composed as the black car whisks him closer and closer to you. It’s a Monday and he’d been in work when the care home had rung him. Saying that you’d woken up in a distressed state and cut your hand against the wall. Apparently the photo that he kept loose in the frame without glass had fluttered to the floor. They’d said that you’d thought that the photo was actually him. That you’d thought members of the care home staff bad and wanted him to save you from them. That though you are having some quiet time in your room now they are sure that you’d appreciate an earlier visit from him if he could make it happen. It hadn’t even been a point to debate. Mycroft had assured them he’d be there as soon as possible, hung up, got Anthea to cancel his later appointments and left immediately. 

 

*

 

You've managed it! You’re out. The fresh sea air had felt like heaven on your face from the moment you’d stepped out, but you hadn’t lingered. It had been difficult enough to get out in the first place. You’d had to wait for people to come into the hotel, so that you could sneak past them. Apparently people can come in, but not go out. What sort of hotel is that? That had made you even more convinced that someone was playing games with you. Watching and waiting, trying to mess with your mind. Well you won’t let them you think. You won’t!

 

You’re past the brown railings now and marching down the beach towards the sea. For a moment though you almost forget yourself and think that you’re back on a beach that you’d visited with your parents when you were young. You even look around for them, expecting to see your mother sitting on a towel reading and your father basking in the sun. You expect that if you took off your shoes and socks you’d be able to feel the sand in between your toes and suddenly you want to tilt your head upwards and breathe in the sea air properly and smell the scent of chips. Want to listen to the call of the gulls as they soar up above and stay so still that you might be able to spot a pretty shell or see the sight of a tiny brown crab scuttling by. You want to do all those things so much that your head almost spins with it all. But then the image and your mind settle down enough for you to remember that you’re an adult now, outside a hotel, which you have to get as far away from as possible. Even now you can feel people watching you. They’re coming, you think, they’re coming. 

 

*

 

Mycroft’s eyes are focusing in on the care home as the car gets closer, but just as it pulls up alongside the pavement he takes one look towards the sea, hoping that it will calm him, before he has to go in there and face you. But the sight of what he sees quickly makes him feel alarmed. For you’re there, on the beach, your hair bedraggled, as you wear a baggy white t-shirt, black leggings underneath a flapping blue and black skirt, odd socks and clunky brown shoes. One of your hands is wrapped in a white bandage. You’re growing steadily closer to the sea. For one moment he thinks that he must be imagining the sight of you-he can't know that your security detail and his had spoken between themselves, communicated the fact that you were out of the care home and decided that it was best, unless your life was severely at risk, to not do anything considering your state of mind. Their boss was already on his way there after all and would be immediately notified of your whereabouts upon arrival if he did not notice them for himself. Mycroft blinks now. But when you’re still there he moves forwards urgently and takes his seatbelt off clumsily one handedly. He can sense his driver-Jonathan-looking at him through the windscreen mirror, his hazel eyes puzzled beneath his mop of dark brown hair. But with no thought of his own safety Mycroft flings the car door open. He hears the honk of a car horn as he darts across the road. His heart jumps to his throat; he can feel it pulsating in his neck. But suddenly he’s on the beach and everyone whose been brave enough to venture out on this blustery day as it begins to spot with rain stops and stares as this smartly dressed man in a black coat, dark suit, white shirt and with his black and brown stripy tie flapping runs past them. You’re on the wetter part of the sand now and a couple more steps and the water will be able to touch at your feet. Mycroft, already short of breath, somehow finds an extra spurt of energy. “F/N!” he pants as he overtakes you and turns, coming to a stop in front of you. You look at him in astonishment. He touches at your shoulder and releases his breaths through an open mouth as he takes you in. Your face looks a little blotchy, as if your body might be trying to fight off the cold, but other than that you don’t look too bad. A little stressed maybe. He thinks that he can see more of the whites of your eyes than usual. “You shouldn't be out here,” is what he tells you when he finds the energy to.

 

“Oh, you want to do something now do you? What happened earlier? You just left me for work I suppose?” you get out angrily in an upset fashion. Mycroft stares at you, keeping one hand on your shoulder and withdrawing the other. He flinches though when you say, “They’re watching me Mycroft! It’s your fault. We've been here so long that people must have started noticing that. Must have started thinking that we have a load of money because we can clearly afford to pay for a hotel for this long. They were in our room!” your voice sounds choked now. Mycroft lets go of you and raises his hands in a manner that he hopes will appease you. “I thought that they were going to attack me!” Tears spurt out of your eyes. 

 

“Shh, shh.” He gathers you up in his arms. You beat at his chest with your small fists. “F/N it’s”-

 

“It’s not all right,” you say wetly, “They’re watching me. They’re probably watching us both right now. They’re probably in our room, at this very moment, stealing all our things,” you finish with a moan, pushing your head against his chest. 

 

“They’re not, they’re not.” He strokes at your hair soothingly, whilst you sniffle against him. “You’re safe now.” His arms tighten around you. “Come.” He pulls away. “Let’s go back.”

 

“Did you not hear what I just said? They’re everywhere Mycroft. Spies. All around.” With that you look about. As you do so Mycroft stares down at you, feeling horrified. Elements of his job and the dangerous lifestyle that Sherlock has as a consulting detective seem to have bled into your mind, making you all the more paranoid as you struggle through this disease. It’s nothing to what he feels though when you look back at him and say, _“Moriarty!”_ You clutch onto Mycroft’s arms. “Mycroft it must be Moriarty!” You look at him anxiously now. 

 

He swallows and closes his eyes. “F/N it’s not Moriarty,” he says when he opens them again. Your lips part. “He died. Do you remember? The day that Sherlock had to fake his death.” You let go of him. His fingers begin to rub at your arms. You nod, but he can tell that it doesn’t really make sense to you. “The people at the-at the hotel are just that. Just ordinary people. You know how security conscious I am. I would never let you be put at risk if I could help it. All this, you getting yourself worked up in a panic about everything, it’s just you telling yourself stories my dear. I’ll have to keep you better entertained.” 

 

“I just want to go home.” Your head falls against his chest. “When can we go home?” 

 

“Soon, I promise.” He kisses the top of your hair, feeling guilty. “Just stick it out a bit longer, okay?” Your eyes are sad as you pull back and look at him. “You know I wouldn't be able to do my work half as well if I didn't have you to come back to.” 

 

You smile at him in a watery fashion. “You really mean it?” you ask. “You work better because of me?” 

 

“Of course I do.” 

 

You grasp at his hands and look down. “Mycroft?” 

 

“Mm?”

 

“Why have I got a bandage on?”

 

Mycroft takes a bit of a deep breath. “You hurt yourself a little earlier. The people at the hotel-nice people you see? They put a bandage on for you.” 

 

You look surprised at that and you lift your bandaged hand up to study it in more detail. “Hmm. Maybe they’re not so bad.” You think of the waiter suddenly and you’re about to say something, before you remember just in time that Mycroft probably won’t approve of it and close your mouth again. 

 

“They just want to ensure we have a good stay.” He puts an arm around your shoulder and begins to lead you back up towards the road. You begin to wriggle away from him and pull back, ducking your head beneath his arm until you’re standing apart from him once more. He turns and looks back at you. His heart feels uneasy. 

 

“Where are you taking me?” You look at him mistrustfully. His chest tightens in pain. He wishes that he could still be the one person that you knowingly look at with such love in your eyes. It still seems so early to him, but you’re letting go of him more and more each day. 

 

“Back to the hotel,” he murmurs, shifting his position. 

 

“Can’t we just stay here?” You wave your hands. “Walk on the beach? Eat somewhere nice?” 

 

A lump forms in Mycroft’s throat. He swallows it back down. How he’d love to do all those things with you! But today is not the right time to. You've fled the care home when you shouldn't have been able to. It is his duty to take you back there as soon as possible. “Perhaps some other day?” He shifts his position. “I'm needed back at work.” 

 

“Oh.” You look down, your eyes burning with something and Mycroft knows that once more you’re feeling disappointed and annoyed with him. 

 

Together, with his arm wrapped around your shoulders, you amble up the beach. Mycroft keeps his gaze fixed on the care home. He feels angry with all of the staff inside it. They’re supposed to protect you and yet somehow you’d come to be out here and so very close to the sea and drowning. His fingers tighten upon you. But as well as channelling that rage with his dark expression he can also sense that the people of the beach are watching you again as you both cut a path through their middle. No doubt they’re trying to memorize what he looks like should they hear that you’ve been abducted or killed in the coming days Mycroft thinks to himself sardonically. You’re so young that the last thing they’d think would be that you’ve got Alzheimer’s and that you’re currently living in the care home across the road. They probably just think that you work there and that you’re the type of couple who rows every day. Probably think that he’s come from a break at work to harass you. He makes a bit of an impatient sound in his throat. You peer up at him. 

 

Once he gets you to your room he dabs some of the lavender oil onto your wrists just like he’d done before. Then he dries your hair, brushes it, helps you change into fresh, warm clothes and gets you to sit on the edge of the bed. He wraps the throw that’s on the bed around you. He brings you a cup of tea, just like he always does because he knows exactly how you like it, and, in any case it is one of the few things that he can do for you now. He sits close to you, whilst you drink it. After he takes the cup back he gives the staff a verbal bollocking, not caring who hears him as long as you don’t. He doesn’t ever want you to be frightened of him. He tells the staff that he’ll be filing an official complaint with them and that he’ll give the care home all the money it needs, so that it can be ensured that its walls of all things don’t hurt its residents. He returns to you, picks up your favourite book and sits at the head of the bed with his shoes off. He wouldn't usually act in such a casual way. He knows that it isn't allowed. But he’s beyond caring that day. He’d been frightened that his wife would nearly drown, he’s not going to worry about spending time with you now, about taking a moment to just pretend that you aren't actually where you are. You settle in between his legs, your back to his chest and he begins to read to you. You don’t get very far these days with reading on your own because of your lack of concentration, but from the very first time that he’d found you sitting in your room with a book open on your knees as you’d stared confusedly down at it he’d made a silent vow to himself that he’d read to you on a regular basis. A lot of times it’s your favourite book that he’ll read from, but sometimes it’s poetry or newspaper headlines too. It had been bad enough that you’d lost the ability to write for pleasure as much as you used to. He wasn’t going to let you not have this too. He knows that you won’t remember any of it, but just the act of him being able to do something for you soothes him and hopefully strengthens the bond between you. As he reads to you this time he can begin to feel the tension sinking out of you, begin to feel you melting against him, and for a moment he forgets that there are cameras watching the room and loses himself, ducking his head down close to yours, as if you are both at home and enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon together. You arch your head back and snuggle closer to him. He closes his eyes, just breathing you in. But when the loud sound of a resident moaning when one of the daily arguments about something or another occurs, making you both jump, he manoeuvres himself around you and stands, abandoning the book on the bed. In that moment he remembers the situation all too well. He clears his throat. “I have to go,” he says. 

 

 _“Oh.”_ There it is. That disappointment again. Mycroft’s heart sinks. He hates doing this to you. But, trying to pretend that all is normal and fine he returns the book to the top of the cabinet. 

 

“Why don’t you ever stay with me?” You’re on your feet now. He turns around to you slowly. His heart jumps with apprehension inside his chest. “We never sleep together any more.” He’d hoped that you wouldn't notice. 

 

“It’s like I’ve told you,” he says, raking a hand back through his hair, before he flings his arm down again. “I’ve been getting back so late from work. That’s why we decided to book two rooms remember? So that I wouldn't have to disturb you all the time.” He hates all these lies, hates the way that everything’s shifted, so that rather than see you look happily at him on a near daily basis you’re at the point where everything about him seems to frustrate you, that he has to pretend this is a hotel, but these earthquakes in your relationship are preferable to the truth in every way. 

 

“I’d rather you slept here.” You fold your arms. 

 

“F/N,” he says as if you’re being difficult. 

 

“No!” Your fists punch downwards. “Work takes up enough of your time as it is. W-What’s the point of me even being here if we can’t be together like we would be at home?” you ask. 

 

Mycroft looks at you in a strained fashion. “You know why you’re here.” He pauses as he realizes the irony of him telling you that when in reality you have no clue. You think you’re in a hotel and he’s neglecting you for God’s sake-“Because we love each other, and because you knew this was going to be a long trip. You didn't want to be apart from me just like I didn't want to be apart from you.” 

 

“But we hardly see each other.” You frown. You move across to him and grasp at his tie imploringly. “Stay with me tonight. Stay here for the whole of the night. Just one night.”

 

Mycroft feels something wavering inside him, but he knows that he can’t. It’s not even an option. Not any more. “I'm sorry.” He steps back. He kisses at your cheek when he sees your devastated eyes, before he turns and hurries out of there.


	5. Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft and you are everything to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support. :)

“Hey F/N,” a woman who speaks with the voice of your best friend Molly says. You look across from where you’d been trying to gaze through the drizzle on the window. You’re sitting by the table close to the little nook of the jutting out wall. The chair opposite you now has a bit of a mark on it from where you’d attempted to tug it out. It had taken you several moments to realize that you just weren’t going to be able to sit down there comfortably no matter what you did. Now, as Molly comes to sit down by you, shaking the raindrops out of her hair and clutching her folded umbrella with a smile, you feel suddenly bitter again. 

 

“Mycroft and I have been here so long that even our friends have to visit us,” you say. 

 

Molly doesn’t respond to that and you go back to looking out of the window again. 

 

“Tea?” someone says beside you. 

 

“I don’t want tea Mycroft,” you say in an absent-minded fashion. Mycroft doesn’t reply. “I just want to go home.” You move across, nearly pressing your cheek against the window. “I just wish you’d understand that.” 

 

You’re not sure how long its been when you feel a presence by the table. When you hear voices you look around. There’s a strange woman sitting right by you. You don’t know when she’d got there, but now she’s talking to the waiter who’s joined you and she seems very nervous and a little jumpy. It’s strange and stupid, but seeing them talking together-you don’t recognize it as being a stilted conversation that’s full of awkwardness-makes you feel a little annoyed. If you were able to think coherently then you probably would have rationalized it by thinking that it makes sense that since you haven’t been feeling that warm towards Mycroft lately seeing this other man, whose always been very sweet to you and who’s evidently had some sort of feelings for you if he doesn’t still have, talking to another woman would make you feel irritated. “Do you two know each other?” You’re pleased when that stops them in their tracks. “It’s just that you seem to be getting on so well together.” Both of them look at you in surprise and the waiter’s eyes in particular seem to be on you intently. 

 

“Oh God F/N no, we know each other through you mainly, and I suppose through Sherlock.” The woman’s cheeks go pinker at that and as it occurs to you that she has feelings for Sherlock her face seems to shift before you and become that of your best friend Molly. You wonder when she’d gotten there and why she had never said, ‘Hello.’ 

 

“Sorry,” you mumble. “My husband and I haven’t been getting on lately, but I didn't mean to stop you.” You don’t see the look of devastation that crosses the waiter’s face or the worried glance that Molly shoots him, her teeth nibbling on her lip, and the reason that you don’t see either of these things is that with a bit of difficulty you push your chair back and get up. You head off out of the room. Molly stays where she is, but the waiter follows you. You look at him knowingly. He helps you sit down on your bed, before he joins you there. “You still like me then?” You look at him. 

 

“Of course.” Something seems to shine in his eyes as if he’ll always like you. 

 

“Nothing can ever happen between us though,” you tell him. “I may have let what I did slip out just now and I can see why you’d feel…” you trail off. You can’t find the word. Its taken a lot of energy just to get what you have out. 

 

 _“Encouraged?”_ the man suggests and you smile because the waiter’s just reminded you of one of the good things about Mycroft, which is that he’s always been able to find the word that you’re looking for. Something about him being able to do that has always made you feel safe. 

 

You nod, feeling choked suddenly. You've been so focused on your feelings of rage towards Mycroft of late that you’ve allowed yourself to push away the reasons that you _do_ actually like him and you get the sense that, that’s something you never should have done. Your hands claw against your jeans. “I love my husband.”

 

Suddenly the man’s lips are on yours and you don’t know how it happens, but as soon as they are you recognize with a tug that the thin lips that are moulded against your own are not the waiter’s, but Mycroft’s. In your head you see an image of Mycroft coming in, oblivious to what was going on in the room. You picture seeing the waiter so close to you on the bed, how he was about to kiss you and then the vision extends to Mycroft throwing him out, before he swoops to sit beside you and presses his lips to yours, claiming you for now and forever. But in reality it’s like you’d missed that scene. In reality all you can focus on is the way that Mycroft’s large hand is cupping gently at your cheek, whilst your hair just falls over his fingers. In reality all you can focus on is the way that his lips are nipping against your own, his tongue coming out to soothe at the worried flesh. It sends a burst of overdue pleasure through all of your mind’s senses. He only withdraws when your hand goes to his belt. 

 

“I'm sorry,” he says, and your mind slows down enough to lose some of its lust-fuelled haze. 

 

Suddenly you’re telling Mycroft what you’re now realizing you should have done for a while, “Mycroft there’s…there’s been this other man.” Mycroft’s face grows serious at that. “I don’t know if you saw him just now. I can’t remember.” Your hands flap in a panic. You don’t know how you’ve failed to remember such a thing. Mycroft grasps your hands with his and suddenly you feel like crying. You don’t know why you’ve felt so angry with him of late. You can’t even remember why you have. All you know is you don’t feel that way any more. “He’s been sitting with me. I think he’s been bringing me things, but I can’t remember”-your words get more forgotten in your distress-“But I rejected him,” you truly try and get this point across. 

 

“Shh.” His thumb strokes across your jaw, but you think that you don’t deserve such affection from him, such understanding and delicacy. 

 

“I'm sorry. I don’t think I did anything, at least I can’t remember”-you feel so frustrated. Why are you finding everything so hard today?-“But I'm so, so sorry if I did or if you think that I did. I never meant to.” 

 

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says, and you wonder how he can be so sure of that. He must see the confusion in your eyes as he takes you in his arms again. You feel warm and safe and your chin is perfectly content to rest upon his shoulder for the rest of the day. “I love my wife.” 

 

“I love my”- is all you manage to get out, before you fall asleep, weary by the day’s events, but it is enough. Mycroft kisses at your hair, before he lays you gently down onto the bed. 

 

*

 

“It’s not a hotel is it?” Mycroft and you are sat on a brown wooden bench that overlooks the beach and sea. It’s a few weeks later. You’re huddled up in your coats-you in a big light brown puffa jacket that Mycroft hadn’t seemed to think you capable of putting on yourself and Mycroft in his usual black. You've been watching the rolling waves, but now you peer up at your husband. He looks back at you steadily and you just know that you’re right. Letting out a little breath you turn your head away from him again. “Have I been bad?” you ask him. You don’t know why-perhaps it’s because Mycroft’s been with you more lately than the waiter-but you think that you’ve had more space to notice and think about where you are. Your fingers curl up a little upon your jeans. Your heart hitches inside your chest. “Is that why I’ve been sent here?” You look back at him. “Is that why I hardly see all my friends and you?” If it was a hotel then surely you’d been home by now? It feels like you’ve been where you are for months. _Years._

 

Mycroft shakes his head. “Of course you haven’t been bad,” he assures you. He brushes your hair back from your forehead. 

 

“Then why-?”

 

Mycroft swallows. Something flickers beneath his eyes as if there’s a great debate going on in his head. “It’s a hotel,” he says, but the words come out heavy.

 

“Then”- your brow furrows as you break off. You know that there had been some reason you’d thought of that you could argue against it being a hotel, but you can’t remember. 

 

“What’s brought all this on?” He nudges at your arm. “Hmm? A bad dream?”

 

You feel even more confused at that. What exactly is he asking you? “Yes, a bad dream,” you say distractedly. 

 

Mycroft looks at you sympathetically though you don’t know why. “Come,” he murmurs, gently assisting you into a standing position. You look at him, seeking direction. “We’ll be late for our restaurant reservation if we don’t move now.”

 

You feel a little excited at that. “We’re going to a restaurant?” 

 

“Yes my dear,” Mycroft says as you begin to move off with linked arms. 

 

You wonder how you could have forgotten about such a thing. You can’t know that until now Mycroft hadn’t told you. 

 

“This is a lovely place isn't it?” you say as you take in the way that the dying light of the day is falling across the beach. “We should come on holiday to it sometime.”

 

Mycroft’s throat bobs. “Well”-he looks at you quickly-“You are sort of on holiday here. Accompanying me on a work trip remember? We’re staying at a hotel close by.”

 

Again you wonder how such things could have slipped your mind. “I must be tired from all the travelling,” you murmur to yourself, deciding that it must be that. Mycroft looks at you and you think that you detect something suddenly nervous in his eyes, as if he might know what the real reason that you’d forgotten is. Before you can ask him what it is though you become aware of something and you pull him back with a shriek. “Mycroft watch out!” Mycroft looks at you in alarm. He can’t work out why you’ve done such a thing. “You could have died! Why weren’t you looking at where you’re going?” You spin around, blocking his body from the rectangular hole that’s on the ground. It’s right by the door of the building that you’d been heading towards. 

 

Mycroft’s arms wrap around you instinctively. Your hands go to his shoulders. “Shh.” He can sense that other people are looking your way, wondering no doubt what had caused the sane, healthy looking woman to have the sudden outburst that she had. But he does not look at them. He keeps his focus on you and makes soothing strokes against your back. It is only when you turn back to the blue canopy that hangs above the restaurant and when your eyes dip down to the black welcome mat, your head tilting as you do such a thing, that he begins to realize what the problem is. 

 

“We can go somewhere else. They shouldn't have that there. They should have a sign.” Your body trembles against his chest. 

 

“It’s safe,” he murmurs, squeezing at your shoulders, “I assure you.” You shake your head disbelievingly. Mycroft waits for a couple to leave the restaurant. Both of them glance at you confusedly as they do so, sensing that something’s wrong though they don’t know what. Then he lets go of you and moves towards the welcome mat. 

 

“No Mycroft please don’t,” you beg, your body vibrating all the more. Your hand tries to snatch at his, but it misses. Your heart pounds and as he makes to step on the hole your eyes close automatically. You expect to hear the whoosh of him falling to some far, unknown place. Expect to hear the gasp of shocked breath as he realizes that you’d been right all along. Tears stream down your face and little sounds that make up Mycroft’s name leave your mouth. Mycroft’s always thought himself the smart one and now he’s died because of such a belief. Your body trembles. “Mycroft. Mycroft,” you moan. 

 

“F/N,” your husband says and you realize that you must be hearing him inside your head. You let out a sharp breath. “Open your eyes for me.” You shake your head. You never want to open your eyes and see that he’s not there. Your body almost collapses to the floor, but suddenly strong hands are upon you, lifting you back into a standing position. 

 

You open your eyes without meaning to do so. Your breaths come out of your mouth in a pant as your e/c orbs fix hazily onto your husband’s blue ones. “Mycroft!” Your hands cup at his face, before they cross around the back of his neck. “Oh God!” You press your head just beneath his shoulder, half-closing your eyes again as you breathe in his scent. “You chose not to do it. Oh God. Why would you tease me like that?” you ask him in a pained tone. 

 

You can feel Mycroft’s head shaking close to yours and you pull your own back, so that you can look at him. He looks over his shoulder momentarily, before he looks back at you again. “There’s no hole there.” You swallow and look at him uncertainly. He takes a step back. His hands reach out towards yours. “Hold onto me. If there’s really a hole there then you can pull me back.” 

 

“I'm not as strong as you,” you protest. But then his eyes seem to be telling you, ‘Trust me,’ so you nod. You take his hands and cling onto them all the tighter as he takes another step back. You expect to be dragged into the hole with him and though the thought sickens you and makes your heart beat accelerate it makes you feel better that at least you won’t be left here alone. That you’ll be falling into oblivion together. But miraculously, and through some means that don’t make any sense to you, Mycroft stands on top of the hole. Your mouth gapes as you blink at him. 

 

“See?” He smiles. “Perfectly safe.” With that he pulls you towards him and you let out a breath as your face collides with his chest. 

 

You pull away and look at what you’re standing on in astonishment. “How are we doing this?” 

 

“Magic,” he says roguishly, before he turns, opens the door and guides you inside with one hand. 

 

The space is wide and open. People are sitting at tables and eating seafood off white plates on equally white tablecloths. Plastic shells and lobsters hang on the wall. The place smells fresh and airy. 

 

“Are we at a restaurant?” you say, one of your hands linked with his as you look up at him. You hope that you are. Its been such a long time since you’ve eaten out. Why you don’t even remember when it last was. 

 

Mycroft looks at you softly. “Yes my dear.” He knows that you probably don’t recall that he takes you out to eat somewhere twice a month. A lot of times to the place you’re in now in fact since it’s so convenient and close by. 

 

You feel happy at his answer. Butterflies churn inside your stomach. This will be one of those good nights, you can sense it. You’ll eat something beautiful, take in the pretty sights and fall even more deeply in love with your husband. 

 

Mycroft gets you settled at a table, tugs off your coat and settles it on the back of your black chair with some effort, before he goes across to the bar to order your drinks. He can still see you and he keeps a very close eye on you, whilst the bar man serves someone who’d gotten there more quickly than him. You seem to be looking at something that’s down on the table in a curious fashion. Mycroft can’t help but feel sad and more thoughtful now there’s this distance between you again. He’d read that there might come a time when you might confuse things for holes in the ground-you’ve already had some trouble with spatial perception-but this had been the first time that you’d actually done so. It is just another reminder of the battle that you are slowly losing and Mycroft sighs. For a moment, when you’d both been sitting down on the bench, he’d been able to just close his eyes and feel the steady presence of you breathing next to him. Been able to pretend that you might have actually been accompanying him on a work trip after all, but now that this has happened he feels unable to cover up the truth of it any longer. Unlike the boats in the harbour the vessels of your mind are adrift from their moorings and unable to return. Unable to make the connections they had once and to link everything together they just bob there, largely useless and waiting to rust. What is the point of this disease he wonders? Why does it make you and everyone who has it suffer so? 

 

“Evening Sir,” the barman says, bringing Mycroft out of his thought and getting him to tear his eyes away from you. “What can I get your lady and you this evening?” Mycroft can tell that the man believes he’d simply been admiring you just now, not making sure that you wouldn't wander off and do damage to yourself. 

 

He gives the order with a hint of nostalgic sadness about him, for there would have been a time when he really _would_ have been admiring you, but before the barman can move away he leans forwards, his fingers on the bar and lowers his tone as a matter of urgency, “My wife’s been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.” The barman looks across at you in surprise now and Mycroft can tell that he’s wondering whether he’s heard right and taking in your young appearance. “If you could just”- the barman looks back at him again. Mycroft licks at his lips nervously. “Just get a message out to the staff who will be dealing with us tonight, coming to our table and delivering our food? She tries to be independent, but requires a little more patience, especially when making a decision. I don’t want anyone upsetting her.” Not after what you’ve already been through today he thinks. He has to protect you and what’s left of your mind as much as he possibly can. 

 

“Will do Sir. Sorry.” The man nods gravely at him. 

 

Mycroft bows his head in thanks. Not everyone is always willing to be so understanding when you’ve come to this restaurant together in the past. Some people hadn’t believed him about your condition, forcing Mycroft to take you out of there and make a hasty retreat, so that you wouldn't become distressed. Some had been downright rude and others plain ignorant. It makes him feel a sense of relief at the thought that everything might be better tonight. 

 

The barman goes to get the drinks, but when he’s done so and Mycroft’s getting out his money to pay the man lays a tanned hand upon one of his own. “On the house,” he says when Mycroft looks at him. 

 

Mycroft’s mouth shifts between being open and shut for a moment, not knowing whether he should accept such a gesture. It feels wrong to be benefiting from your illness in any sense. But in the end, feeling touched, he decides to and pushes the note he’d been about to pull out of his wallet back into it. 

 

The man gives him a look of perceptiveness and Mycroft ferries your drinks to the table. 

 

You smile at him, but seem to be in your own little world. He pushes your drink-an orange J2O-into your hand to try and get you out of it. You smile at him again, more gratefully this time and take a sip of it. “This place is nice. What is it?” 

 

“A restaurant my dear,” Mycroft says patiently. 

 

Your eyes grow wide at that. “A restaurant? You never told me that we’d be coming to a restaurant.” You look pleased. 

 

Mycroft smiles and takes a sip of his own drink-a whisky. He licks considerably at his lips for a moment. “We should probably be deciding what we want to eat. Shall I read bits of the menu out to you?” he asks a little anxiously. You take offence sometimes, at him trying to do things for you, especially when you’re both in public. You’d never minded being held and comforted at home, but you’d been keen to never come across as a damsel in distress whenever someone else aside from him could see you. 

 

You look as if you’re thinking about it for a moment, before you wave a hand. “Oh, go on then.” Looking pleased he plucks the black covered menu out of its wooden stand and draws it flat against the table. “You always get what those…thingamabobs mean a lot better than me anyway.” You smile at him fondly, shifting closer to the edge of your seat. One of your legs comes in between his. Your hand rests on the table, before it darts up again. It brushes against your lips, before you drop your head down upon it. 

 

Mycroft smiles at you indulgently and begins to study the menu. He knows that Mediterranean food is apparently good for the mind, so he reads out the section that covers that first even though it’s probably too late for you now. You seem only half-interested. He moves onto the seafood. You seem keen on a prawn dish, but, knowing that you’ll find it difficult to eat and not wanting you to get upset because of it he steers you onto a more manageable dish of sea bass with yellow fried rice and opts for a steak himself. 

 

The meals arrive, but as much as Mycroft would like to try his hardest to believe that you could really be eating at a restaurant when you’re at your full health he can’t. Not any more. You've crossed over another line today and you can never go back over it. 

 

“Is yours nice?” he enquires instead, trying to get himself out of his gloom. He doesn’t want you asking what might be wrong with him. Even at your worst you’ve still been remarkably perceptive about how he’s feeling. He doesn’t want to spoil the little pleasant atmosphere that might be able to be achieved between you. 

 

“Delicious,” you smile, and Mycroft is suddenly cast onto the trail of a memory. One where you’d both been in bed together at home. You’d bathed together and your skin had smelt more inviting than usual. Once he’d started to run his tongue along it, going over the ridge of your collarbone, before he’d moved further down, appreciating the gasp that you’d let out, he hadn’t been able to stop from flicking his tongue out and tasting every part. 

 

“Are you getting ready to eat me?” you’d asked. You’d lifted your head off the pillow, so that you could look down at him. 

 

Mycroft had looked amused at that. “Mm,” he’d said, “I want to see if the whole of your body tastes the same.” He’d only half-glanced at you, before he’d sucked suddenly at your stomach. You’d arched forwards and he’d let out a pleasant sound against you. 

 

“Well, I think you already know the answer to that,” you’d said as you’d sunk back down again. “But then,” you’d added, as one of your hands had pushed his head down. He’d wriggled up and began to lick and suck further at your breasts, “I-suppose you’d know _-ah-_ whether I did or not because of your love of food,” you’d panted. He’d carried on with his task for a moment, before he’d lifted his head up. You’d somehow seen exactly what he’d been thinking. “Oh, don’t worry,” you’d said, “I don’t mean it in a bad way. I love food too. Food is delicious.” 

 

His eyes had calmed down at that and he’d grown more mischievous. “Is there any food in particular, which you favour?” He’d lifted himself off you and looked down, giving you a clue. 

 

“Well”- your eyes had gone to exactly where he’d wanted them to, his bulging manhood, which was increasingly straining against the confines of his dark boxer shorts. 

 

“Yes?” he’d enquired, at the same time he’d pushed his underwear down. 

 

You’d sat up then. “There is a certain delicacy that I prefer above all other.”

 

“What’s that then?”

 

 _“You.”_ You’d lunged forwards and as he’d tumbled backwards, his back splaying against the duvet, you’d slowly crawled upon him and began to suck at his skin. 

 

 _“You’re_ getting ahead of yourself,” he’d murmured. But as usual you hadn’t paid him any attention, _and,_ as usual, that was the last time that he’d protested. 

 

Coming out of the memory now Mycroft wonders if your choice of word just now had somehow been triggered by that memory. Wonders if it’s still lurking there, somewhere in the back of your mind. Wonders if all the memories of him and you are. Even the ones of you coming to this restaurant before, which he’d earlier thought had been lost. His tongue dabs consideringly at his lips and he glances at you. The mind is a curious thing. It’s one of the reasons why he’s going to be donating his brain to science when he dies. He won’t be giving yours though. He wants your physical body to be as close to how it had when you’d been healthy, even if it’s too late for your insides. 

 

You’re smiling at him again. Your hands somehow tangle together upon the table and as your fingers brush against his you say, “I love you.” 

 

Just hearing you say that makes him feel choked. He’d been assessing you as he always does in his time with you and he hadn’t taken today as a particularly good day. The fact though, that somehow, throughout whatever oddness is currently going on in your head, through all the plaques and tangles, you know who he is, and that you love him and feel a need to confess such a thing is almost too much for him to bear. 

 

“I love you too,” he gets out thickly. There had been a time when he couldn't get such a thing out to you in public. A time where no matter how many times you would have gently nudged at him and told him that he was supposed to say the words back to you he would have just smiled in a rather awkward fashion. But when you’d been diagnosed and you’d first said you loved him in public with such a meaningful look upon your face he’d said it back. If he only had a short time left with you then he wasn’t going to waste it. Wasn't going to be embarrassed. No matter who might hear. That’s what he’d decided. Now, when he’s so close to tears, he sticks to that. You look at him concernedly. 

 

But before either of you can say anything more the lights dim. Your fingers tighten against each other’s instinctively. You look around. Mycroft feels his mind beginning to panic as it always does when something unexpected happens. Finds himself worrying about your safety. Once upon a time, had you appeared to be at threat, he could have given you clear direction. Told you to hide. Told you to do whatever was necessary. But now, what with your rampaging mind being the most prominent threat to you, even if he told you all those things would you still listen? Would you remember in a few moments time what he’d instructed you to do? Such panic is not needed now though it soon turns out. For the cause of the lights being dimmed is to add to the early evening ambience. A moment later small red candles that have been lit are brought around and placed on each table. You seem fascinated with the yellow flame, but Mycroft keeps a close eye on you, not wanting you to try and touch it and hurt yourself. A moment later a small group of staff come out from the kitchen entrance, all holding different instruments. There is a violin, a flute, a clarinet and an accordion. They come and stand by your table and Mycroft, suddenly understanding that this is all down to the barman, sends a grateful look his way. It’s returned with a soft smile. 

 

“Oh Mycroft!” you say delightedly as the staff begin to play romantic, soft music on their instruments. “It’s not even my birthday or anything.” 

 

“Every day should be a special one for you my dear,” Mycroft murmurs, feeling once more close to tears at the depth of gratitude in your eyes. He wishes that he’d actually planned all of this. It would have been even more special if he had. Your other hand comes to the table and he takes it in his. It’s still special he tells himself. You clutch at each other as you listen to the music. 

 

As you leave the restaurant half-an-hour later, stomachs full and hearts content, minds soothed by the music, it begins to drizzle. You, humming the songs that you’d just heard, don’t pay it much attention, but Mycroft opens his umbrella and holds it above you with one hand, whilst he holds you close with his other. You snuggle into him, your head dipping down to his shoulder on occasion, your expression the perfect one of peace. It’s amazing how quickly the moment can be ruined. 

 

“Are we going home now?” you ask him quietly. 

 

You feel rather than see Mycroft shifting beside you. “Back to the hotel.”

 

“Of course,” you remember, feeling sleepy, “Your work trip.”

 

Once you get back to the hotel everyone seems keen to find out where you’ve been, which you find irritating. You don’t wait for any of them to come back and ask where they've been. You sense that Mycroft must feel the same by the slight edge that’s to his voice as he replies. You wish that he’d get all cross with them and tell them to mind their own business. You’d really get a thrill out of such a thing. 

 

“Did you enjoy yourself?” the woman who you’ve come to know as the receptionist asks you. 

 

“Yes of course,” you reply shortly, wondering why she’d ever think that you wouldn't get pleasure from spending time with your boyfriend? It’s the first work trip you’ve gone on with him after all and you’re enjoying this slightly higher status in your relationship. You feel Mycroft and you are getting more serious now. Why wouldn't you enjoy benefits that you’re getting from such a thing? You wrap your hand tighter around Mycroft’s waist. “I love my boyfriend.”

 

 _“Husband,”_ Mycroft murmurs so softly and close to your ear.

 

You look at him. “Maybe one day,” you say, feeling even happier by this development, “You haven’t even asked me yet.” 

 

Mycroft looks like you’ve just kicked him and you don’t know why. Don’t know why his hand goes to his finger, and you’re surprised to see a wedding ring is there, before his gaze shifts to your own hand. You’re wearing what appears to be a wedding ring too and you feel confused. Had you been pretending to be married or something? Is this some sort of game? But then you don’t think that your boyfriend’s one to play games. Mycroft must see that you’re in an odd state for he steers you away down the hallway. 

 

“Annoying woman,” you murmur, your mind already having forgotten the matter of the confusing wedding rings because of the new scenery. 

 

“Mm,” Mycroft says in response, taking the lead. 

 

You feel a little disappointed. Perhaps he hadn’t found her as irritating as you’d thought he had? His stride starts to quicken up and you fall behind. Suddenly a painting on the plain wall catches your attention and you stop and stare at it. It’s mostly in black and white, or perhaps a more accurate term would be white and grey. It shows tall buildings in a city. You think that you should know the place. Think that you’ve been there in fact, but you can’t remember. Towards the left there is a couple strolling on the pavement. A man has his arm around a woman’s waist and his hand is holding an umbrella above them. The woman’s coat is f/c. You really like it. Something tells you that you’ve seen the painting before, but you think that you must be mistaken. You haven’t been in this area long after all. You've only just got there because of Mycroft’s work trip. It’s the first time you’ve been asked to go with him and you feel so happy because of it. It must mean that he’s taking the relationship more seriously and for once you hadn’t even had to coax him into doing such a thing. He’d just come right out with it. It had felt so out of the blue, but you feel as if you’re still floating because of it. Mycroft must really love you! Think of the devil-Mycroft suddenly appears beside you. “Hey,” you say in a pleased fashion, feeling happy to see him, “Did you just finish work?”

 

Something flickers in Mycroft’s eyes. “No. I have to leave for it in a while actually. We were just heading to the room.” 

 

“Have you seen this?” You point to the painting. “It’s just like us isn't it?” You look back to your boyfriend now and have no idea of why he suddenly looks so solemn. You’d just made a happy point. “What is it?” 

 

“Nothing,” he says abruptly. “Let’s go to the room.” He makes to pull your arm, but you tug it away. 

 

“Well, if you’re not going to explain.” You look at him. “Don’t rush me Mycroft.” You look back to the painting, but you can’t see it properly because of the tears that are now blurring your eyes. You feel annoyed with him for not letting you in again. You’d thought that he’d got over that. But if your boyfriend won’t let you in then you don’t want to let _him_ in either. “I can find my own way there.” 

 

“Very well,” Mycroft says, and much to your surprise he leaves you to it, walking down the hallway and heading out. You frown at him. This is not the state that you want either of you to be in. 

 

The first thing Mycroft does, although he knows that he shouldn't, as he gets out of the care home and onto the semi-lit pavement is light a cigarette with fumbling fingers and begin to smoke it. You wouldn't approve. You never had when he’d smoked previously on occasion at home. But you are not here, or not properly here anyway. It’s the first time he’s used your condition as an excuse for bad behaviour and he hates it. Between that and the fact that you’d both had a free drink from it there have been a lot of firsts tonight. But if you could have just seen yourself today, thinking that welcome mat was a hole when its never been a problem before, thinking that he’s your _boyfriend_ for God’s sake, and now a flicker of your happy face when he’d proposed to you comes back to him and he coughs a little, struggling to exhale, then you’d probably allow him one cigarette. How could you have forgotten that? His proposal to you? Your wedding day? Everything that’s happened since? Forgotten your long lost child? His lip wobbles and his shoulders shake. Perhaps that bit is for the best he thinks. The memory of you losing your child would hardly be of comfort to you, but it had been so painful for you both. More than that you’d gone through such a time together. It had made you closer in the end. The pair of you are the only ones who know how much short-lived joy the prospect of that child had brought you and now _he’s_ the only one. It pains him, it pains him so much. On the verge of tears he sniffs and takes comfort from the act of smoking. He hears the tread of someone’s footsteps come to a stop beside him. He assumes that it is a busybody from the care home. “I don’t need your advice,” he growls at them. Why can’t they see that he just wants to be left alone? To be given the dignity of crying in private? 

 

“Good, because I wasn’t going to give you any,” comes a voice, which most definitely doesn’t belong to anyone at the care home, but rather to his brother Sherlock. 

 

Mycroft looks across, feeling slightly less irritated, but still a little annoyed, to see that his brother is smoking too. Sherlock’s not looking at him. “What are you doing here?” he asks. 

 

“Just wanted to check on the situation,” Sherlock says casually. 

 

Mycroft feels aggravated. “You’ve been following us.”

 

“Correct. Did she realize who you were for the whole night?”

 

“Yes,” comes the curt reply. 

 

Mycroft turns his head away and Sherlock can tell that he doesn’t want to talk about it. “The way she behaved before going into the restaurant”-

 

“Was nothing more than a minor”-

 

“Is that what you thought?”

 

“Of course,” Mycroft lets out a huff of impatient breath and nearly ends up coughing again. He feels so frustrated, this time with this blasted cigarette that isn't helping him as much as it should, that he throws it to the ground, as he turns towards Sherlock and crushes it beneath his heel. His brother turns towards him. “Sherlock, F/N’s in a care home now. Before she was I had you, Dr. Watson, in fact _everyone_ saying that it was the right thing to do, despite the fact that it seemed too early to me. What more can you possibly want me to do?” he asks with exasperation in his tone. They stare at each other steadily for a moment, before Mycroft shakes his head, turns and begins to walk away.

 

“Perhaps for you to see her less.” Mycroft stops dead. “I know you want to keep things as normal as possible, but you are an hour and thirty-seven minutes away one way. That’s on a good day,” Sherlock exclaims as if Mycroft must be mad himself. 

 

Mycroft can feel his whole body stiffening, feel his hands clenching, his fingernails digging into his palms. You have already forgotten that he is your husband; he does not want you to forget who is completely. He just can’t allow you to! He must be kind, gentle and patient and you _must_ remember who he is! You just have to. He turns around with a sharp authority. “Do not tell me when I can and can’t see my wife Sherlock. You don’t understand.” 

 

Sherlock walks quickly up to his brother and looks him desperately in the eye now. “You don’t think I do? Perhaps I don’t.” Sherlock looks away. “Not in the way you are speaking of.” He looks back again. “But I know what it is to love Mycroft. You of all people know that-you have constantly hinted that I should avoid doing such a thing- and I know what you’re doing now. The way that you’re treating all this isn't healthy for either of you.” 

 

“The way that I'm treating all this?” Mycroft says in a strangled voice. “Sherlock, F/N didn't even remember I was her husband tonight and now you’re telling me not to see her? Not to try and remind her of that? Of who we are together?” Sherlock looks at him with cautious eyes. “I'm just trying to be there for her,” Mycroft confesses, his voice cracking. He feels ashamed of showing this much emotion in front of Sherlock. He knows that Sherlock’s known since Sherrinford that he’s not as strong as he makes out, but he still likes to try and maintain some decorum in front of his little brother. 

 

“I know.” Sherlock shifts his position. He hates seeing Mycroft like this. “I know you are. I'm sorry. Perhaps this is my fault.” Sherlock looks away, before he looks back at him again. 

 

Mycroft’s back stiffens ever so slightly. “What do you mean?” he asks. 

 

“It was me who told F/N that the care home was a hotel. I know you’ve been thinking all this time that it was just something she’d been telling herself to make it easier for her, but the truth is it was _me_ who was trying to make things easier for her, and you,” he adds as an afterthought. “But”- he nods, pulling a small orange folder out from the inside pocket of his coat. Mycroft can see a folded piece of writing paper inside it-“If you read this then you’ll be able to understand why I did it. Why I felt the need to tell her that.” 

 

Sherlock looks full of anguish now and Mycroft doesn’t know whether it’s that or just the prickling sense of unease that he’s had ever since Sherlock’s taken the folder out, a folder which Mycroft’s eyes seem unable to leave, but he feels scared. “What’s that?” 

 

“It’s everything F/N wanted to tell you. She made a plan before she got diagnosed. She spoke to me a little about it and together we worked out when it would be best for me to hand the folder to you.” Sherlock hands him the folder. It seems that the time has come. 

 

Mycroft looks down at it. It’s only when he hears retreating footsteps that he realizes that Sherlock is leaving him. He looks at the folder again. Somehow he manages to get into the back of one of his usual black cars and arrive home in the early hours of the morning. He is tired. Too tired to open the folder now, even though he wants to. He falls asleep, still half-dressed on his bed. He wakes, and then, instead of heading out immediately and going back to the care home as he’d planned to he sits in the sitting room with the folder on the side table. He stares at it for the longest of times. He thinks that he should have known that you’d written something down for him even though he hadn’t found anything. Should have known that you’d want to try and communicate to him through a manner you’ve always found easier to convey yourself in than the spoken word. He reaches for the folder and spends another moment staring at where it’s now on his lap. Finally he opens it.


	6. The Truth?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft learns what you might have done for him.

_Dearest Mycroft,_   
_If you’re reading this then I can only say that I am very sorry for what you’re going through and what you must have gone through already. I am writing this two and a half weeks after my diagnosis, so I appreciate that a lot must have happened since then. I know even now though that you will not leave me and that even all these months, and hopefully not years, later, you’ll be receiving this because you’ll still be by my side._

 

_Knowing that though, and having had all the time before my diagnosis became solid fact, I have had enough time to think and cobble together in between this damn forgetting how I would like for things to unfold now that this is the situation we are left with._

 

 _I am very sorry Mycroft. It is possible, actually more than likely, that you won’t understand what I'm about to tell you and why I’ve decided to do what I have. You see I love you, and because I love you I do not want you to suffer any more than this damn disease will already make you do so. For that reason I want things to be over with swiftly. I will exaggerate my symptoms. Forget things when I have not actually forgotten them. Put things deliberately out of place. That, along with all of the times where I do actually do those things should be enough to encourage you to put me into a care home sooner rather than later. I will recruit all my friends to help with this. To give you a little nudge when you should need it. When I am in a care home I don’t doubt that things will be hard at first. It will be the first part of our separation and I know that you will kick out against it. But in time I think that things will grow easier for you. For one I have heard that people don’t tend to live long in care homes, so even though I am young, once there I fully intend to succumb to the disease, even in my more lucid moments in the hope that it will release me and by default you from its grasp all the quicker._

 

“I don’t want to be released! Not if it means losing you!” Mycroft blurts out in a gravelly tone, a white-hot sensation of shock and anger hitting him. He feels scared. Scared by you talking in such a way. Angry with himself for not having seen it-the difference between when you’d faked the symptoms and when they’d been real. How could he have been fooled? How could you have kept lucid enough to fool him? To remember the plan that you’d created? He thinks back now, his mind going to when you’d caught him looking at care home brochures and pointed to the beach. He’d thought that you’d been lost in tiredness and the fog of your mind then, that you’d merely stumbled in accidentally, but now he wonders if you’d done such a thing on purpose. If you’d known-and the more he wonders the more he thinks that you must have done-about him researching into care homes. He wonders if you’d done your own. Wonders if the home he’s placed you in had been your favourite? It must have been quite high up on your list for you to point it out like that and such a possibility mollifies him for a moment, makes him think that he might have done one thing right. But still he feels troubled. Troubled that you might have gone into a home at an even earlier point of your disease than he’d even thought. If he’d known all this! Known about all your trickery then he would never have let that happen or if it had already then he would have gone to the care home and pulled you straight out of there. He should have got his own men and women to come inside the house and watch you instead. Shaking slightly he adjusts the paper and reads on. 

 

 _I know though that no matter how long it actually takes it will seem an age for you. You’ll struggle as I lose more and more of myself and once more I am sorry for that. You probably regret falling in love with me now don’t you?_ Mycroft shakes his head. He could never regret such a thing. _Probably wish that you’d never let yourself succumb now that this has resulted in more pain than happiness. All this time you’ve been telling Sherlock not to, encouraging him to fight against loving anyone, which not even you could escape in the end. But this is the situation that we’re left with, which is why I am trying to help you and make it as painless for you as possible. But I know you Mycroft and you’re not going to make it easy on yourself or for me to do that are you? You’ll want to help me. Its been that way ever since you first admitted your feelings to me, perhaps even before then when you admitted them to yourself. You’ll want to cling on so tight that neither of us will have proper room to breathe. You’ll want the time when I forget you to come as far in the future as possible. But here’s the thing Mycroft. That time is going to come. You can’t do anything to stop it. I'm sorry. But here’s the real reason why I'm writing this letter to you. It’s to tell you that you need to let go and you need to start doing so now._

 

“No,” Mycroft utters, breathless, his fingers clutching onto the paper all the more. It had been hard enough to have Sherlock telling him such a thing, but to have _you,_ to be able to hear _your_ voice in his head saying that, although you’ve only written him a letter, is a thousand times worse. A _million_ times worse. He closes his eyes, before he opens them again. 

 

 _Holding onto me is just going to make it all the more painful for you. Caring is not an advantage remember? You need to hold onto that now and everything that you’ve been telling Sherlock all these years. You need to stop visiting me so much and begin to practice life without me. I'm sorry, but it’s true._

 

“I don’t want to!” Mycroft growls, his arm knocking against his glass of scotch as he gets to his feet, his tears splattering against the page. The glass tips over and the amber liquid spills onto the carpet, seeping in. The glass rolls until it comes to a stop. Mycroft looks at it regretfully for one moment, before he reads on. 

 

 _I'm not saying to forget us or everything that we've been through. We've come too far now for that. Don’t throw yourself into work either. I know it will be tempting to. I know you will have been through so much already by this point and it is hardly fair of me to make this request or to tell you how you should handle things now. But please listen to me Mycroft. I’ll be too far gone by the time you read this to tell you, so I am telling you now. Let me go. I'm not saying never visit me. I'm far too selfish for that, but check in on me less. Give yourself some space. Drink a glass of scotch._ Mycroft looks back to the stain on the carpet. _Be kind to yourself because you know what’s coming my love. You must._ Mycroft swallows. _Read that book you’ve been putting off. Think about us. But let me go. For yourself. For me. That is the last request I will make of you._

 

 _This letter hasn’t been easy to write. But up until now I’ve been able to be bossy and somewhat demanding so its been all right._ Mycroft lets out a watery snort at that even though his entire body is trembling. _I love you Mycroft. I know this disease is cruel. I know it has robbed me of many years happiness. But in a way I am lucky. How so? You ask. Well, because I love you and I have not just had the opportunity to love you from afar, from a distance, but up close. Those are the memories that I hope will leave me last, but if things do not go that way then remember that just because I cannot bring them to mind or speak of them verbally I still have them because they are recorded inside my very soul. You are there too. You will always be there. Goodbye Mycroft._   
_I will be yours forever,_  
 _F/N._

 

Mycroft lets out a breath and then he’s calling for a car and clambering inside it with the letter still clasped in his hand. Tears are streaming down his face, making his usual smooth skin look rugged, but though his driver looks at him in concern nothing is said between them. 

 

He gets to the care home around lunchtime. You are ill with fever and napping in your room. Apparently the care home had just been about to phone him. He goes to you immediately. Your hand is up by your face, resting on the pillow. Your hair is splayed all around you. You are still so young, beautiful and vulnerable. Far too much of these things to have taken on the burden that you have. To be looking out for him when your mind is being ravaged. To be worried about damage control like they all seem to have been lately. Him with you, Sherlock with both of you and you with him. He lets out half a sob now and sits down on your bed. Something flickers beneath your eyelids at that and your nose gives a twitch, but aside from that you don’t stir. His large hand caresses at your hair. “You stupid woman. What have I done to deserve you?” He swings off the bed and crouches beside you, peppering your face with fervent kisses. 

 

Finally you wake. You jerk your head back and look at him for a long moment. He’s still as he waits for your eyes to focus, but when they do you wear a look of confusion upon your face. 

 

Mycroft cannot take in the fact that your fever might be exacerbating your symptoms, all he can think is, _‘No, not now. You haven’t forgotten me. Not today. Not after what I’ve just read.’_ “It’s Mycroft,” he tells you and he can barely keep his voice steady, “Your”-

 

 _“Boyfriend,”_ you say and right then he’ll take that. He gives you a watery smile. Your eyes grow concerned as you look at him. Your hand goes to cup at his cheek. Your thumb catches against one of his tear tracks. “What’s happened?” You lift your head slightly up off the pillow, wondering what’s got your normal emotionally stable boyfriend feeling so disturbed. You have a sudden thought. “It’s not about my fever is it?” You touch at his hand. “I'm going to be fine. It’s just a bit of flu. You didn't come home early from work did you?”

 

“I”- Mycroft hesitates. He carefully pushes your head back to your pillow. You seem to relax a little though your eyes still focus on him, as if he is the most important thing in the entirety of your existence. His heart cracks. You no longer know how much you’ve done for him. He can sense that. You’ve already lost too much of yourself to know the extent of the sacrifice that you’ve made for him. But he’s determined to get you to see it a little. “I had to, I worry about you all the time.” He ducks his head. His throat feels tight. Tears close to the surface. 

 

“Oh Mycroft.” You try and stroke at his cheek again, but your fingers touch at it clumsily more than anything else. “I'm going to be fine.” Mycroft half looks at you, wishing that were true. “You worry too much.” 

 

“I love you,” he blurts out. His hand strokes at your hair. “You know that don’t you? I know I’ve never been much of one to say it over the years, but I love you and I’d do anything for you.” If he could be here instead he thinks, not that he’d have wanted you to make all the decisions that he’s had to make for you or watch him deteriorate, but if he could just take all the pain and confusion away from you then he would in that moment. 

 

A smile blooms upon your face at his words of devotion to you and you close your eyes in pleasure. Mycroft basks in the wonderment of what those words are still capable of doing to you, even now. In that moment he feels as if _he_ is the lucky one for somehow being able to have that much of an effect on you. “Mycroft Holmes you’re going soft,” you breathe. “I’ll have to get ill more often if you’re going to tell me that.” 

 

Mycroft’s face grows more serious. “I should have told you such a thing every day.” He takes your hand and kisses it. 

 

You look on the verge of saying something, perhaps that he _still_ has time to, before you forget it. You close your mouth, nestle in your bed properly and close your eyes. He can see it now, more than ever, why Sherlock had told you what he had. He imagines the fear that his brother must have felt when you’d told him of your plan. The way that he might have shaken his head and not wanted to initially go through with it. The way that you would have pushed him until he had, saying that he had to do it for Mycroft. That if he didn't then he wouldn't be doing right by his brother. The way that Sherlock would have come the first time to see you in the care home and been shocked by how much you’d let yourself fall already. He knows that Sherlock would have done anything to make you feel better in that moment because he would have wanted to do the same even more had he known it all. He can imagine his brother, his head perhaps looming over yours as you’d been sat on the bed, your mind half-addled, urging you to keep telling yourself one thing, that this is a work trip. That you’re not in a care home. That you’re simply on a work trip with your husband. Sherlock would have done that because it was the only kind thing he could do in that moment. You were going to forget everything anyway. You might as well do so in a more manageable fashion than the one that you’d crafted for yourself where you were kind on others and not on yourself. Coming out of his thought now he strokes reassuringly at your shoulder and down your back. “I'm never going to let you go,” he whispers, deciding in that moment that he is not going to follow your last wish no matter what should happen. Your lips quirk into a smile, as if you need someone and had only half wanted him to go along with what you’d told him to. He decides to give you that one selfishness. You deserve to get everything that you want and need in the world after the extent that you have put yourself out for him. He knows that the letter must be a lie after all. That, as much as you’d perhaps wanted to go through with such a plan, the disease in your mind wouldn't have let you. Logically that is what he feels must be true. His heart had wanted to believe in it earlier though and it still does. Believe in the story of this woman managing to, for a while at least, take control of the disease that would eventually crush her. Believe in _you,_ that you would be able to do that. But even though he knows that it is probably not something you’d successfully managed, it is enough that you’d wanted to do that for him. 

 

*

 

“I want you to do something for me,” you say one dry afternoon a few months later when Sherlock and you are sitting on a bench. You put your hand over his. 

 

“What’s that?” You can feel the youngest Holmes brother stiffening, the warmth of him in his dark coat shifting beside you. His eyes, paler than the colour of the blue scarf he’s wearing, look at you intently. 

 

You swallow. You’ve had to keep repeating these words inside your head and now that it’s finally time to get them out you don’t know where to begin. “I need you to take on a case.” Sherlock grows even stiffer. You seem to have forgotten that you’ve already given him your final case. “It shouldn't be too hard. I just need you to answer me one thing. I don’t think I'm staying at a hotel am I? This isn't a work trip. But I'm too afraid to ask Mycroft, so that’s why I'm asking you.”

 

Sherlock swallows. His knee knocks against yours as he shifts. “Where do you think you are F/N?”

 

“I think”-your fingers tighten upon his hand and your eyes nearly close as they blur with tears-“I think I'm in a care home. Although I don’t know why.” Your voice wavers. 

 

Mycroft chooses that moment to return with the ice creams he’d gone to fetch for you all. His eyes dart between you both worriedly. “A ninety-nine for you Sherlock.” He passes the cone over. “And a tub for you my dear,” he says, sitting down on the other side of you in his grey suit, white shirt and dark coat. 

 

“Didn't you feel like having one?” Sherlock asks, more curious than spiteful now. 

 

Mycroft’s just about to make an offhand reply when you tell him, “You can share mine.” He smiles and holds the small tub of vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce out in front of you. Slowly he dips the flat blue plastic spoon in and tenderly begins to feed you, having a taste of it himself on every other bite. 

 

Sherlock nibbles on his own as he watches the pair of you. But there is this tension hanging over you all and finally he says, “F/N wants to know if she’s been staying in a care home?”

 

Mycroft is so surprised that the spoon nearly hits the side of your mouth. He yanks it out again hurriedly. You let out a little cough and he rubs at your back, apologizing profusely and feeling worried, before he catches the dribble of ice cream that runs down towards your chin with a handkerchief. 

 

Finally, blinking a little, you look at him again. “I started to wonder-it’s hard to because I’ve been feeling so tired and thinking just makes me more so, everything seems such an effort these days-but I started to wonder because all the people are older, and you can’t go in or out easily, everyone asks you stuff, you’re not with me at night. I wrote all those things down and hid them at the back of my wardrobe. I kept forgetting it was there, but every time I found it again and thought about it the more I kept coming to the same conclusion. I’ve had to keep repeating everything in my head just to remember it now. I'm still so young. I'm not imagining it am I?”

 

Mycroft shakes his head and brushes your hair away from your eyes. His lips rub together consideringly for a moment, some of the white melted ice cream still on them, before his free hand cups over both of yours. He thinks that it’s incredible that you’ve managed to work out what part of your situation is despite the fact that your mind’s addled and once more his heart wants to believe in the story of you managing to, at times anyway, wrestle control back from the disease. Wants to believe in you carrying out your plan. Fooling them all. Not sure what is true any more he murmurs, “F/N, I'm not sure if you remember, but once, a long time ago now, you told me how you wanted your death to be in the papers?” You nod. You can’t remember saying that specifically, but it does sound like something you’d say and if Mycroft’s saying that you’d said it then it must be true you think. He wouldn't lie to you. You know that much about your boyfriend at least. “Well, you have been in the papers my dear, because of your illness.” Slowly now Mycroft puts the tub of ice cream down on the other side of him and withdraws a strip of folded paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. He opens it out and holds it in front of you. 

 

“Dementia,” your mouth struggles with the word as your finger points at part of the headline. Your whole face scrunches up. 

 

Instinctively Mycroft moves closer to you. “Do you know what it means?” You shake your head, your eyes wide and fearful as you look back at him. For a moment Mycroft just swallows, building up his courage, whilst Sherlock finishes his ice cream with a couple of fierce crunches, as if he’s taking out the anger that he feels at your plight on it. “It means that your mind is slowly growing less capable than what it once was, as if it’s taking a long rest,” he tells you as gently as possible. “Going into hibernation. It means that you’ll start to forget things, lose a sense of yourself, what you like to do and who you love.” He pauses now, his mind going back to the fact that you’ve forgotten him as your husband. You stare at the paper clipping with tears shimmering in your eyes. He hates to see such a thing. “You were in the newspaper because you were so young when you were diagnosed. Only thirty-two.” His voice gets close to cracking. 

 

“So that’s all that I'm going to be remembered for?” you get out with an incredulous anger. “Having a disease?” You slam your fist down into the paper. 

 

Caught by surprise it flutters out of Mycroft’s hand before he can stop it and drifts into a damp puddle that’s not gone from the night before. He looks at it and considers picking it up for a moment, before he changes his mind. He’d started carrying it around with him as a physical reminder of the burden that you are bearing, a reminder whenever he felt like he was having a bad day to be more patient and cautious with you because you are different. But the fact that even now you’re still trying to figure things out, trying to fight, is making him think again. You might be different now, but you’re still trying to be the person you once were and even though your letter talked about succumbing and doing right by him he knows that part of you still has that survivor’s instinct in you, that will to live and be the person, a lot of the time, you still think you are, just a younger version of it. He feels like he should have seen that before. “No,” he says, drawing his eyes away from the younger you who is getting smudged into nothing and turning to the you who matters. The you that will always matter. He grips onto your shoulders now. “You’re not going to be defined by your disease. Not by the people who know you.”

 

“But by everyone else”-

 

“No,” Mycroft says more firmly, pulling another piece of paper out. This is the letter you’d written to him. “You ensured that yourself by writing this”-

 

“What’s-?”

 

He reads the letter out to you. After he’s done so you stare at the paper with wide eyes, as if you’d forgotten that part of yourself and are both shocked and happy about its existence. “You see?” Mycroft tells you, looking at you desperately now and fully wanting to believe in that story. “That disease won’t be your legacy, your sacrifice and ability to put others first will be. I’ll send your letter to newspapers across the world, tell everyone your story if it means that much to you,” Mycroft speaks as Sherlock looks at him with some considerable and thoughtful pride. His brother is not putting himself first, but you. “You will not be forgotten F/N. Unfortunately this disease will always be tied to you, but it will only ever be a small part. I will make sure of that.” It’s hard for you to properly contemplate the gravity of what he’s telling you, to properly understand just what he means and how big the scope of it all will become. For in two years time the letter that you’d written Mycroft will have gone global and people all across the world will be keeping an eye on your progress through a blog that’s being updated by both John and Molly. But you know that it’s big and right then it feels like the best thing that anyone could ever give you. Too overcome with it all you begin to cry. “Oh F/N.” Mycroft pulls your head to his chest. You cry noisily against him, your hands fumbling against his dark coat, your tears leaking onto his white shirt. Mycroft cups at your hair and makes soothing noises against your ear, telling you that he knows it’s unfair, but it will be all right, it will be. He wishes that he could just believe in it himself. 

 

Carefully Sherlock moves around you both and takes your tub of ice cream back to the bench with him. Sitting down on it once more he carves a smiley face into it with the spoon. The red of the raspberry sauce make the eyes and mouth look slightly manic, but pleasant all the same. He clutches at your arm gently and gets you to look around at it. 

 

“Thank you,” you breathe with a bit of a watery laugh as soon as you see it, before you bury your face in Mycroft’s chest once more. He holds you close to him and Sherlock puts the tub aside, before he does the same. The Holmes brothers form a cocoon around you and you feel warm, safe, but most of all loved. This is another moment that will go on to live in your soul forever, even though by the time you get back to the care home that afternoon you will have forgotten all about it.


	7. Final Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stories help Mycroft when it's time to say goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we are. Final chapter. This story is a very personal one to me, so I appreciate the fact that you've read this and your support more than ever. Thank you. :)

**Two Years Later**

 

These are the last days. The days where you’re bed ridden with pneumonia in hospital, the days where you don’t talk. There is no writing of postcards now. You’ve forgotten who everyone is and can barely stay awake long enough to get your bearings. You’ve lost all sense of who you are. Mycroft tries to remind you of it. He points at his wedding ring, which he’s taken to polishing every night, so that it might gleam a little brighter each day and remind you. He tells you that he’s your husband. Tells you anything that might make you realize just how long you’ve known each other for. It rarely does him any good. On the rare occasion that he does manage to get a flicker of recognition from your eyes it’s gone just as quickly. It’s like trying to light a fire in the middle of a storm. Impossible, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. 

 

After both Sherlock and he had told you about your diagnosis you’d seemed to take a turn for the worse. You’d become frailer and more withdrawn. When you'd sat down it had taken you an age to do so and you'd had your head down as you’d mumbled and hummed all kinds of nonsense. Mycroft had fretted and worried that he’d done the wrong thing in telling you the truth about your condition and the care home even though he wasn’t quite sure how much you remembered him doing so. You’d taken to seeing him as the waiter nine times out of ten and when you didn't you’d sometimes ask if he was your babysitter. You’d seemed to think that your parents were still alive. Sometimes when he’d arrive at the care home he’d see you searching for them and you’d seem to think that he was getting in the way of that process whenever he joined you. Other times you’d look at him with distaste and tut, saying that you were too old for a babysitter and it’s about time that your parents realized that. You seemed to think that you were a seventeen-year-old most of all. A seventeen-year-old who just hadn’t met him yet. Mycroft’s heart had curled up in agony each time. Other times you seemed so happy, like you had your whole future ahead of you and you just couldn't wait for it all to start. You’d talk to him, believing that he was a waiter, and babble on about how you were going to become someone important. Mycroft would smile at that and try to encourage you. He couldn't help it. Those were the best days that you had now and he had to make the most of them. He always felt like a serene old gentleman whenever he expressed hope in you, like he might be the one who actually belongs in the care home, but seeing you happy, with so much belief inside you, rather than the slightly agitated version of you that you seemed to become whenever you believed him to be a babysitter or even worse on those days where you just seemed so stuck inside yourself that nothing could come out, had made him feel calmer. He’d learnt that it was better to be a waiter than anything else. On your happier days, and before the time where you’d become more disinterested in everything, you’d seemed to think that you were on holiday with your parents. Seemed to be flattered by the attention that this older man paid you. He’d seen how you’d looked at his lips a few times. It had both stupidly made him feel better-stupid because he’d known those days were behind you-and twisted at his heart. He’d seen the way that you’d looked out for him. Seen the way that your eyes would light up with something as soon as you saw him, before you’d get a bit of a smile about your face and quickly look down again. He’d known that you might be daydreaming about him and it was foolish to indulge and take comfort from such a thing he knew, but he had. He hadn’t been able to help it. The fact that somehow you’d still singled him out, still seen him as someone who could be important to you, had made him feel significant somehow, even if he was only a waiter in your life, and though he’d hated the thought of that initially, the fact that he still was _someone_ to you had been more important than ever.

 

One night though your focus had gone to his wedding ring and threatened to rob you both of that feeble story that you were allowing yourselves to indulge in. 

 

“Your wife is very lucky,” you’d murmured with a brave confidence about you and Mycroft had known then that you were wondering how you could not have spotted the wedding ring before. Known that you were inwardly chiding yourself and perhaps even calling yourself pathetic for crushing on a married man. He’d felt pain then because he’d known that, that was not the time to remind you that in actual fact it was _you_ he was married to. He’d made the mistake of doing that before and you’d gotten terribly upset and distressed in your confusion. He’d looked away again, but you must have spotted something conflicting going on with his face, because you’d asked, “Is she not?” 

 

He’d felt choked as he’d slowly looked back at you. You’d both been sitting on the bed in your room. Your hands had nearly touched as it was, but at that point you’d gently placed yours on top of his. It had triggered him to say, “My wife’s ill.” He’d felt bad as soon as the words had come out of him. His eyes had grown wide and he’d felt anxious that you might realize that it was you he was talking about.

 

But you’d seemed too full of sorrow and perhaps guilt that you’d been thinking of kissing a man who was worried about his sick wife to think of such a thing. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize.” You’d let go of him then and your hands had started fidgeting. You’d seemed to be doing more of that, twisting your hands together and bending and ripping any bits of paper that were given to you. He’d cupped your hands still with one of his. “In that case,” you’d murmured, “She’s lucky to have you looking after her.” 

 

“Someone will do the same for you one day,” he’d told you, trying to give the part of you that believed you were a seventeen-year-old hope just as you’d once given him the same as a waiter. You’d nodded. But he’d felt you slipping away, felt this story that you’d both been living fading and it had been suddenly too much for him. He’d stood and started to drift away, “Goodnight F/N.” 

 

“But it won’t be you,” you’d gotten out just as his hand had touched at the door. He’d hesitated and looked back at you. You’d looked horrified at what you’d just said, but as if a part of you didn't care too because it was just the truth. “Sorry.” You’d looked down again. 

 

Full of sympathy for the stage of life you thought you were at and devastation too because the reality was that you were at the end of it, he’d turned and gone across to you. There he’d crouched down, taken your hands gently in his and said, “You will be loved. You _are_ loved. Your parents love you do they not?” 

 

“Yeah…” You’d looked embarrassed then, as if you were ready for something a bit more than familial love and he’d reminded himself of that difficult in between stage when you are not quite independent, but still striving to be so. 

 

He’d kissed delicately in between your knuckles on both hands, as if to give you something to remember him by. Then he’d got up and left. 

 

That had been the last day you’d ever spoken. You’d got pneumonia and been taken into hospital. That had been when you’d started to lose a sense of yourself and the roles of everyone even more. He’d sensed that you hadn’t even cared who the people around you were a lot of the time. Who _you_ were. 

 

Now he’s just gotten a phone call. You’ve stopped eating. The hospital don’t think you have long. Mycroft knows with a pounding heart that it’s time to say goodbye. His throat feels tight from just the thought. It has been a long time coming he knows, but that doesn’t make it any easier. He sends a text to Anthea. He can’t bear to talk to her. He just tells her to cancel all of his appointments. It is a Thursday. A Thursday at the end of September and more than likely the last day that you will ever be on this same Earth with him. He can’t bear it and he knows that not only can he not do this alone, but there is one person who would be very angry with him if he did. Two including you. He calls for a car and picks Sherlock up, before they go to the hospital together. 

 

When they arrive he peeks in at you in the private room. You’re on your back sleeping in bed. He lets Sherlock in first. 

 

Sherlock leaves his brother in the hallway outside and shuts the door softly behind him. Mycroft cannot bear to look in, to intrude on this moment in any way, so he leans against the wall opposite, closing his eyes and just wishing it was any day but this one. It occurs to him suddenly that, that is a selfish thought, that at least this way you won’t suffer for much longer, but like a lot of things lately he cannot help it. He’d do anything not to have to say goodbye to you today. 

 

Meanwhile in the room you’re in Sherlock pulls a chair across to your bed and sits down. He takes one of your hands in his. Already the blood seems to be leaving it and collecting around your heart to keep it going for as long as it can. He can’t believe that this is it. He’s come to see you so often, both here and in the care home, that it could just be another visit. He half expects to be leaving here and coming back again tomorrow. But, bullying his mind to recognize that, that’s not going to be the case, he forces the words, “I need to thank you,” out from his lips because this will be the last chance he has to say them. You show no signs of having heard him. He grips onto your hand tighter. “When you came to 221B that day, the day after your diagnosis, you were so strong and forceful when you could have been falling apart. ‘The game is on Sherlock,’ you told me, ‘But we can’t win this one, so we have to put Mycroft first.’ I can’t imagine being given your diagnosis and being able to act in the way that you did, so calmly, logically, and you stuck to that. You tried to do exactly what Mycroft and I needed you to. You put my brother first and all along you’ve continued to do so. Even now I think part of you still recognizes that he’s important to you. I’ve seen the look that you get about you sometimes when we both visit you, the way you stare at him, as if you’d really like to know everything about him, but don’t have the energy to ask. Well, I can tell you a story about him F/N. His name is Mycroft Holmes. He’s not a waiter, but he is a public servant, so you’ve never got it completely wrong and you are the only person he has ever fallen head over heels for. The only person, beyond family, who he could not let go. He loved you so much that he married you and that’s the best story of all because I could see how it made you both so happy. I can’t thank you enough for that. For everything you’ve given my brother. Thank you.” He kisses at your hand quickly. He takes in your sleeping face, how your h/c hair, now slightly faded in colour frames it, the paleness of your cheeks and your dry lips. Your e/c eyes are shut and he realizes now that he’s never going to see their colour again. Part of you is already becoming a memory and something that is preserved in photographs alone. Unable to take it any more he gets up and hurries towards the door, leaving the room quickly. He can barely look at his brother who is leaning against the wall. He just goes to fall against it himself, tears blurring in his eyes as his pale fingers cling onto it. 

 

Mycroft squeezes at his shoulder, his eyes full of concern for him, before he moves into the room himself. 

 

Sherlock gasps as the door closes behind him. 

 

Mycroft takes up the chair his brother has vacated and looks at you. Just like Sherlock it feels impossible to him that this is it. The back of one of his hands presses against your cheek. Cold. It won’t be long now. He adjusts the bed covering slightly and cups your hand in between both of his, supplying you with what warmth he can. “I'm not sure how to do this my dear.” Admitting that is what breaks him. He bows his head, his fingers scraping against your hand. “How to say goodbye. You’ve taught me so much, but you couldn't have taught me how to say those words F/N, no matter what you might have thought. You’ve always underestimated yourself you know. You would never have allowed yourself to think that saying goodbye to you would be this hard for me. Oh F/N…perhaps we can indulge in one last fantasy together? One of my making this time.” He closes his eyes and as he does so he understands more fully than ever why both Sherlock and you had insisted on sharing and telling yourself stories for so long. It’s the only thing that gets people through reality sometimes. “We’re at home. Can you picture that? I can. We've decided to put the fire on in the sitting room. It’s a little bit early in the year to be doing so my love I know, but we’re supposed to be indulging so we shall. In any case it’s quite cold out there today. We’re sitting opposite each other on the armchairs. On my side table I’ve got a scotch and a piece of chocolate cake. You’re more elegant my dear. You’ve got a glass of red wine and a piece of white chocolate cake with raspberries on yours. You’re picking at the fruit in between your reading. It’s your favourite book, but you can concentrate on it now. Earlier on in the day you’d listened to music and wrote. You’ve done all of your favourite things. You’ve got plans to meet up with Sherlock and all the others tomorrow. Perhaps a cinema trip with Molly? But for now it is just us. I can’t take my eyes off you even though I'm supposed to be reading a newspaper. You are so beautiful F/N. The firelight is catching against your hair. You’ve got a trickle of raspberry juice sliding to your chin and you swipe it off quickly so that it won’t go on your book. You look sheepish and I can’t help but smile at your wonky grin. You catch me staring and you smile too. Everything is perfect. No?” Tears well up underneath his eyelashes. “No, I know it’s not because we are not there, but here.” He opens his eyes. “It’s never going to be perfect again. I wish”-he thinks for a moment-“I wish we had more time, but if this is all we have then I'm grateful for what we've been given. You see my dear, it feels, to me, like I’ve been living a fantasy, a dream, indulging myself ever since we first met. I did not expect someone to fall for me so completely like you have. To accept me. To show such love and understanding. I know we did not get a forever.” He blows out a heavy breath now. “I know there were things you wanted that you did not get.” In his mind a toddler with his hair and your eyes runs about. “But what I want to make clear to you is how much you’ve given me. It’s such a vast amount that I assure you its greatness must dwarf everything that’s been lost. You gave me the gift I never thought I’d have and you must understand how important that is.” 

 

You exhale noisily and Mycroft stands, one of his hands covering yours. You lurch forwards suddenly, your mouth gaping, a wheezy moan trying to leave its depth, before you open your eyes. He feels in awe at their colour in that moment. Looking at them is like looking right through you into your very soul itself and because of that he can tell you’re afraid. You can see for the first time perhaps since the beginning of this exactly who you are and what situation you’re in, as if you’re seeing yourself at a distance. Feel the crippling realization that you have not become as important as you wanted to.

 

“It’s all right F/N,” he says, understanding you more completely in that moment then perhaps he has ever done, “You’re important to me. Important to a lot of people.” 

 

You are weak, but then you mouth the one word that breaks him, _‘Husband,’_ because it makes him remember that if you can see yourself, as you truly are now, then you can also see that you are loved and have been loved. That you are dying, but you are not alone. You are thanking him in that moment he knows. Thanking him for being there and for trying to cheer you up. His breath whooshes out of him all too easily and it is so unfair because you’re struggling to even release one small pant. You look pleased, and it is just for one brief moment, but you look pleased at his shock, as if you’re taking delight in surprising him. For one moment your eyes shine like they used to and you manage a small smile for him. But that proves to be too much for you and you exhale painfully, doing so with a grimace, your eyes fluttering shut again. 

 

Mycroft moves forwards and cradles you for one last time, tears running down his face, as he says, “F/N thank you, thank you so much,” with barely a steady voice and then, for one last time he is lowering you back to the bed and it is not to make love to you, but to say goodbye. He sits down, feeling breathless. His hands cup around yours. “I need to tell you something. I think you’re ready to, but you can let go now. You don’t have to hang on, not if it’s time for you to go. You’ve been incredible my dear and there’s no shame in you calling an end to this fight now.” Even as he says those words Mycroft’s heart feels like it’s breaking, but feeling like he has to encourage and help you just as much as you’ve helped him, even now, he goes on, “You don’t need to feel angry or bitter about what you’ve not achieved, only glad for what you have and you must know that you won’t be forgotten. Right now there are hundreds of people across the globe that know who you are and who are hoping that you’ll find peace. I am one of those people. You need to do this for yourself now F/N. Give yourself what you need after leading everyone else this far.” He falls silent after that and strokes at your hand for a long time. The pattern of your breaths lull him into sleep, and, with his head close to your side as he breathes you in and his hands splayed against yours, he lets Morpheus claim him. He feels safe as he always does with you. When he wakes, an indistinct amount of time later, you’re already gone, having decided to slip off at a time he could not bear witness to. 

 

*

 

Walking on the path towards the church that day Mycroft is reminded of the last time he’d walked up this same path on the day that he’d married you. He’d worn a navy suit then with a white flower, silver waistcoat and black cravat. Today he wears a dark suit with a similar white flower. But of course his appearance is not on the top of his list today. He lets out a bit of a sigh, turns and joins the other men who are waiting for him. Sherlock and he help to carry your coffin on their shoulders along with Greg and John. His face solemn, cheeks still being able to feel the tracks of the many tears he’s shed since the day that you’d passed, he begins to move forwards. A hush descends on the church as the men enter. There are not many there, but a few people who’d been following your case online have made the trip along with friends, distant family members from your side and his own. It is funny, but as they begin to make their way slowly down the aisle, Mycroft’s mind goes back to his wedding day again, not from your perspective of walking down the aisle though, but his as he’d seen you enter and come towards him. You’d appeared a little shy and bashful at first. Mycroft had known that one of the things you’d been dreading the most about that day was that entrance and everyone’s eyes being on you. Like the next person you enjoyed attention. But to you a wedding was about far more than the material things that accumulated one by one. More than about how good you looked in your dress. You wanted to look nice yes, for him and so that you felt happy in yourself. But more than that you, in a very traditional sense, wanted the day to be an announcement of the love that you have for each other. Of course Mycroft had thought that you’d looked more than nice. Radiant and beautiful you’d caught and held everyone’s attention, even more so than the glorious orange and black sunflowers that you’d been holding. Your eyes had found his and they hadn’t left until the moment you’d joined him when you’d let out a bit of a flustered breath and looked down. Mycroft had found himself loving you even more for having that one moment of vulnerability and for sharing it with him. He’d smiled tenderly down at you. Then you’d looked up and it had been his turn to release a breath. In the present he turns and helps to lower the coffin down onto its stand. He moves to the front pew now where his mother is waiting for him. She squeezes his arm, looking distraught. He gives her a nod and sits down. The service begins, but although Mycroft had taken care in planning it, selecting some of your favourite songs to be sung and the most read passage in your favourite book to be declared, making it feel as personal as he could, he feels only half present as it actually begins to happen. It is much easier to indulge himself and think back to the wedding day. The orange of the sunflowers, the redness of your lips, the e/cness of your eyes, how you’d looked, how you’d smelt, the seriousness with which you’d pledged yourself to him in sickness and in health, forever. Much easier to see the ghost of your smile appearing on your face as you’d finished your vows and perhaps it is your ghost in a way, which is allowing him to sink back into this memory now. You’re making it easier for him again. Easier to feel the softness of your lips against his. He only realizes that he’s crying when a tear drops down onto the order of service he’s curling up in between his hands. It splashes against the image of you that is looking at him. That too had been taken on your wedding day. You look so, so beautiful and Mycroft jumps now as another tear drops down upon your face. His mother holds onto his arm, but he doesn’t want her. He shrugs her off. He wants you. You walking out of the church with him as a newly married couple. You holding onto him and ducking and laughing as confetti from happy friends and family get thrown your way. He doesn’t want to be carrying your coffin on his shoulder with the others and walking out to bury you as he now is. But that’s the reality of the life he’s now living, the life where not even fantasies, let alone memories can break through as all his concentration is needed on moving across the soft, lumpy grass. It had rained last night. The mound of earth by your grave is wet. He and the other men settle the coffin down upon the ground and attach what is needed, so that it can be slowly lowered down. Once it is Mycroft recognizes that he feels numb, emotionless. It does not feel like it’s you in that box. For that’s all it feels like to him. A box. Not a coffin containing the most precious of precious cargo. He stares down at it, through all the ‘ashes to ashes…dust to dust,’ through all the shifting of other people and dropping of flowers. Mycroft drops his absent-mindedly, as if he is supposed to be somewhere else. He can tell that his mother doesn’t think he’s in his right mind, she keeps clutching at his arm, trying to steer him as if she’s afraid that he’s going to fall right into the grave himself. Once more he shrugs her off him. 

 

“It’s starting to rain,” she says worriedly, her hand going to his arm once more.

 

“I'm fully prepared for such an eventuality,” he says a little harshly, taking his umbrella off of his father whose been holding it for him. He sees Sherlock giving his parents a bit of a look, but ignores it, opening the umbrella and thrusting it into the air instead. His parents move off along with everyone else and Mycroft feels a sense of relief. Only Sherlock stays, but Mycroft doesn’t mind. Sherlock has been on so much of this journey with him. He can almost pretend that it’s just him and you again. “I'm sure it won’t rain for long my dear,” he says, as if the pair of you are simply standing on the kerb waiting for one of his work cars to pick you up. Sherlock clears his throat and steps forwards, so that he comes to be level with him. Mycroft’s shoulders stiffen ever so slightly now. 

 

He’s about to suggest that his brother must think him foolish when Sherlock says, “F/N left one thing for me to give to you.” 

 

Mycroft turns his head to look at him in astonishment to see that Sherlock’s pulling a white envelope out from the inside pocket of his jacket. He has to do quite a bit of manoeuvring to get it out because he’s got his black coat on. “F/N said goodbye in the previous letter you handed me.” Sherlock shrugs, giving Mycroft no indication as to whether you’d spoken to his brother about the matter or not. 

 

*

 

Mycroft doesn’t open the envelope until he gets home to the house that still reminds him so much of you despite the fact that you have not lived there for so long. He pours himself a glass of scotch and settles down in the sitting room, in the same armchair that he’d imagined himself sitting opposite you in when he’d told you a story of what he’d rather you were doing as you died slowly in bed. He picks up the envelope slowly from where he’s deposited it on the side table. For a moment he considers not opening it. In all likelihood it will be the last thing he ever hears from you. The last fresh words written by your hand. Shouldn't he save it for some other time? A little something to look over after a hard day’s work? Something to remind him of you? But then he thinks that you’d probably intended for him to read it on that day and though he’s gone against your wishes before nothing can be gained from going against them now. He feels curious too, so he opens it. As he unfolds it the crinkle of paper sounds loud inside the otherwise silent house. The first thing he notices is that it smells of your perfume and he wonders if you’d sprayed it deliberately, so that it would do so. He closes his eyes and breathes it in deeply. Slowly he exhales and looks at the paper once more. 

 

 _One Last Story To Be Shared,_ reads the title and his eyes take in the exact way you’d written them, concentrating on it hard. _Do you remember the first time we met? I admit that being shepherded into a café where you were waiting for me, looking like a rather haughty and out of place owl, wasn’t the most romantic of first encounters I could have had with you. I remember how when I sat down, feeling puzzled and a little annoyed, you moved the cheap containers of salt and vinegar out of the way, pinching at them with your fingers, as if you could barely stand to touch them._ Even in the present and all these years later Mycroft blushes. How queer you must have thought him! But he feels a little reassured again when he remembers everything that had followed since and how that one incident obviously hadn’t put you off him. _I might have smiled at that, but I was feeling a bit irritated and wanted to make you aware that I’d be late for work if I stayed too long._ Mycroft remembers now. He can see your e/c eyes looking heatedly at him. Your stubborn persona had come through to him even then, as well as all the other things that he’d gleamed when he’d first looked at you. _You didn't seem too bothered. You informed me that contact had been made with my employment and that I was apparently at an emergency dental appointment. I felt even more irritated with you at that._ He remembers you frowning at him. Your eyebrows bunching down towards your eyes. _You went on to order tea for us and to pour and arrange it all. You looked very gentlemanly in your grey three-piece pinstripe suit. I remember trying to keep myself feeling angry with you. But you were very charming even though you quickly turned the conversation around to what my relationship was with your brother and offered me money to spy on him. John told me that you took him to a warehouse to do the same thing, so again perhaps the fact that you didn't do the same with me was the gentlemanly side of you coming out._ Mycroft blushes. _I wasn’t exactly won over by it right then though. Nor by your snarky hints that Sherlock doesn’t usually let the victims he helps on cases live so close to him. You said that I must be special for him to have made an exception and invite me in so close to his inner sanctum. I told you that I would not be spying on your brother today or any time soon because he’d been good to me and that if you didn't mind you’d wasted enough of my time already and that I really must be getting to work, even if that did mean that I’d be forced to clutch at my mouth all day because of what you’d told them. I remember the way your eyes grew dark, stormy then. You must have been so angry with me._ Mycroft had been he remembers. He’d felt enraged by the way that his brother had managed to convince people like John and you to be loyal to him so very easily when he had to struggle to encourage the same behaviour in people. _I told you that I was not a victim, before I walked off._

 

_I suppose what I am trying to tell you, and the point of me bringing all this up, aside from the neatness of going back to the beginning when we are now at the end of it all, and my want to distract you, is that even though this has happened to me I still don’t consider myself a victim. I grew up in a largely happy home and although I was never the most popular or well loved at school I grew up to have friends in Sherlock, Molly, John and Greg. I fell in love with you. I may not have had everything I wanted in my life, but its been far from a poor experience either, so don’t cry about that Mycroft. Think of me with a smile on your face and remember me as the woman who first frustrated you in the café. For our story did not end with me dying in a bed somewhere. It ended on our wedding day and with us pledging ourselves to one another. It ended with us saying ‘I do,’ and you can’t regret an ending like that, can you?_

 

“No, I suppose I can’t.” Mycroft looks up with a smile. 

 

*

 

 **221B, Baker Street**

 

 **Five Years Ago**

 

 **The Truth**

 

Sherlock’s just read the first letter you’d written to Mycroft about how he needs to let go of you. About how he can’t keep seeing you so much in the care home any more. He looks at where you’re still sitting in the client’s chair. The first thing he says is, “It’s not two and a half weeks after your diagnosis F/N. It’s the day after.”

 

“I know, it’s to make it feel more convincing to him.” You suck in a bit of a breath. “Sherlock listen to me.” You lean forwards. “You have to give it to him if you feel like he’s holding on to me too much, if you feel like he’s going to make himself ill because of it.” Anxiety fills your tone. “I'm scared that he will, that, that’s what’s going to happen.” 

 

It is not that request that Sherlock has a problem with. _That_ he can handle with a bit of careful observation. “You make it sound like you’re going to be able to control this disease, but I'm sure the research you’ve done hasn’t eluded you to the fact that”-

 

“I _know_ I won’t be able to control it,” you nearly snap. Sherlock looks at you calculatingly. “But Mycroft will be seeing me lose enough of myself as it is.” _'If he sticks around,'_ a little voice says in your head, but you slap it away. You can’t think about your fears now, let them cloud this moment or you really will have lost. “But if I can give him this one moment of comfort, make him believe that, for the beginning at least I had some control. That I _took_ control…” You look down for a moment now. Your hands are in between your knees and your head almost joins them there. You take a deep breath, before you look up again. Sherlock’s still observing you closely. “Then maybe he’ll think that at least I was able to do that, that I managed that much. It might soften the blow, make me seem…”

 

“You’re already important in Mycroft’s eyes F/N. There is absolutely no need for you to”-

 

“Just let me do this. Please.” There are tears wavering in your eyes now. “Let me give him this one thing. I can’t give him anything else. I’ve ruined everything.”

 

“No you haven’t.” Sherlock stands up. “You really think that?” He swivels and crouches before you. “You’ve given him everything.” He touches at your arm, gives it a bit of a squeeze. 

 

Your e/c eyes meet his blue ones. _“Please,”_ you beg. Sherlock still looks hesitant. “It’s the only thing that I'm still capable of doing. I'm never going to discover anything. I'm never going to be a mother. Being merciful is all I can be now. Especially for him.” Sherlock opens his mouth. “For your brother, for me,” you clutch at his hand. 

 

“Okay.” 

 

Your face shines with relief. “And you’ll never tell him? No matter what? Even if he should suspect I never want him to know what the truth of this is.” 

 

“No.” Sherlock shakes his head. “This will remain just between us. Forever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note from one of my readers PatPrecieux that helps explain the differences between reality and fiction in this story: Early onset Alzheimers differs from elder in that the type of planning made by F/N is rarely possible in those of advanced years due to the likelihood of later stage diagnosis. Older patients are usually not aware of the decline, and in many cases family and friends don't or won't acknowledge symptoms until they are severe.  
> Also, in end stages, all verbal communication is lost and the patient typically is in a frozen fetal position. Pneumonia is the most likely cause of death.
> 
> Thank you Pat and thank you to all my readers. :)


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